


In Losing What I Am, I Become Who We Are

by nothing_rhymes_with_ianto, solvingfor42



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothing_rhymes_with_ianto/pseuds/nothing_rhymes_with_ianto, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solvingfor42/pseuds/solvingfor42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The discovery of a mechanical Weevil beneath Cardiff starts a chain of events that threatens to destroy Torchwood. Jack is still missing, Ianto seems to be going mad after an injury and Owen is forced to confront his worst fears. When the people of Cardiff start turning into clockwork automatons, things seem hopeless. And then, when Owen decides to investigate Ianto’s strange behaviour, they get worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> SO MUCH LOVE for our betas: Neil's parents, Snarks, and our Brit-picker, consultingmidgardian. We'd also like to thank The SCP Foundation (http://www.scp-wiki.net/), where we found a key plot element.
> 
> This fic was supposed to be short -- we decided to aim for a thousand words, expecting it to expand to two or three times that. But Neil tends to write mostly novel-length fics, and Lex wanted an actual plot, and we found all these great ideas, and the next thing we knew it was over 40,000 words! As Neil said when we were trying to think of a title: 'Somehow I think “The Epic Fic that Would Not End Oh God” would convey the wrong mood.'

The hiss and ping of pipes echoed through the narrow tunnels, masking the sounds that might have helped Ianto navigate. There was almost no visibility, despite the ultra-bright torch he held alongside his gun. Twenty, maybe thirty feet of visibility at a time before the tunnels turned or a nest of pipes screened the next section.  
  
“The signal originates from about 200 yards ahead of your position,” Tosh said, voice crackling slightly over the comm.  
  
“And you're _sure_ it's not a Weevil?” asked Gwen.  
  
“Definitely not a Weevil,” Tosh confirmed. “Or at least, not _just_ a Weevil.”  
  
“What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?” That was Owen, of course. They were spread out through the tunnels, directed by Tosh from back at the Hub, but Ianto could see the irritated expression on Owen's face as clearly as if he were right there next to him.  
  
“The signal's not clear. It has some of the same magnetic form resonance we see with Weevils, but the ionisation is completely different.”  
  
“Well, that cleared everything right up.” Owen retorted.  
  
Ianto tuned them out and concentrated on his surroundings. This was part of an old pump station, long abandoned. The tunnels connected to part of the Torchwood vaults about a mile southwest of here, but Ianto had never been through that section himself. He eased around a corner, careful not to brush against the pipes—some of them were still being used, God only knew for what, and he'd learnt the hard way that several of them were scorching hot.  
  
The tunnel opened into a largish chamber and he paused to play the beam of his torch over it. Pipes circled the walls and crisscrossed the ceiling, and puddles of liquid had collected in all the dips and hollows of the cement floor. A pile of rags and unidentifiable items covered one corner. He approached it cautiously, but it didn't seem to be anything more than it appeared. Kicking at it just dislodged some rats, which scampered off with indignant squeaks.  
  
“I've found a room,” he said into the open comm. “Looks empty, but something's definitely been living here.”  
  
“I'm coming up on it, too,” Owen said. A moment later Ianto saw the light of his torch precede him into the room.  
  
“The signal's still up ahead,” Tosh said. “It's—wait. It's coming back toward you.”  
  
“Stay where you are,” Gwen said. “Tosh, do I have a direct path to them?”  
  
Ianto glanced at Owen while Tosh rattled off directions, and Owen nodded back. They drifted to opposite sides of the chamber and each covered one of the two tunnels most likely to be the target's approach.  
  
“ETA?” Ianto asked.  
  
“It's moving slowly. Probably ninety seconds.”  
  
“Behind you,” Gwen said. The comm echoed her.  
  
Ianto glanced behind him to confirm her position.  
  
“I see it,” Owen said.  
  
Ianto held the gun steady and peered into the gloom. Something lurched into view. Biped, humanoid, hairless, prominent cranial ridge, well-developed carnivorous dentition.  
  
It was a Weevil. Ianto fought down a wave of relief mixed with disappointment.  
  
“You need to check out your equipment, Tosh,” Owen growled. “You just sent us all down here on high alert for a bloody Weevil.”  
“Oi,” Gwen said. “Leave off her, Owen. I made the call.”  
  
Something wasn't right. Ianto cut across their bickering with a sharp “Wait.” For one thing, the Weevil hadn't attacked yet. It was just standing there, looking confused. He moved closer.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“Shine your torches on it—I need a closer look.”  
  
“It's just a Weevil, Ianto. Nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before.”  
  
“Just do it, Owen,” Gwen said before Ianto had to.  
  
The Weevil blinked and held up a hand to block the sudden glare. Ianto froze. The arm wasn't flesh. A copper plate curved halfway around two bronze tubes arranged in imitation of a radius and an ulna. The wrist was a complicated array of gears, and the fingers looked like articulated steel. Its face, half in shadow, was covered in a partial mask of what looked like leather, some kind of lens covering up one eye. This looked familiar.  
  
“No one touch it,” he said.  
  
“Holy shit.” Owen moved up next to him and gave him an exasperated glare when Ianto put out an arm to keep him going farther. “Someone's been modifying it.”  
  
“No...” Ianto said. He'd seen this before—something was setting off major alarm bells. But where? Case after case scrolled through his mind, but none of them matched. He called up the archive listings, as clear in memory as if he were looking at the screen, but nothing there referenced this, either. Was it from Torchwood One? Ianto closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on remembering.  
  
“Ianto,” Owen said, his voice dark with warning.  
  
But Ianto almost had it now. He chased after the thought, the strain of not losing it almost physically uncomfortable. It was organic, not an external modification. Alien, yes, but not alien technology. And it wasn't the creature itself that was dangerous. It was...  
  
“Ianto!”  
  
Something slammed into him, driving him sideways and crashing with him to the floor. And suddenly he remembered where he'd seen this before. It was a—  
  
His head slammed into the cement floor. A moment later, something inside his head snapped and pain blossomed not where he'd hit his skull but right behind his eyes. It felt like the time he'd torn a ligament in his knee—a deep, sickening pop, the sense that something was _wrong_ almost worse than the pain.  
  
The weight that had pinned him to the floor disappeared, and he heard shouting and gunfire above him, but for the moment all he could do was clutch his head and try not to vomit. By the time the pain subsided, it was all over.  
  
“Ianto! Are you all right?”  
  
“Yeah, I'm fine.” He waved Gwen back and got shakily to his feet. The Weevil lay sprawled in the centre of the floor. It was hard to tell in the torch light, but the pool of liquid spreading out around it looked too dark to be blood.  
  
“Let me look,” Owen said.  
  
Ianto shook his head. The pain was disappearing with incredible speed, leaving only a sick taste in his mouth and an ache on the side of his skull. “Really, I'm fine.”  
  
“You could have a concussion,” Owen protested.  
  
Ianto felt strange, off balance, but not like he had a concussion. And he'd had more than his share in the past. “It can wait. Did it touch any of you?”  
  
Owen and Gwen glanced at each other. “I—I'm not sure,” Gwen said.  
  
Owen looked at the corpse suspiciously. “Why?”  
  
Ianto knelt next to the puddle and stared at the body. Whatever connection he'd made before he hit his head, it was gone now. “I don't remember.”

* * *

  
  
It wasn’t the most disgusting autopsy he’d ever performed, but it might’ve been on the top of his list for the weirdest. Though he had the feeling that it was only weird because this Weevil was decidedly _not_ normal. Even before he’d opened it up that had been obvious. An entire limb was made of metal, the joints clusters of gears, the limb itself a mass of metal and leather and plastic and wood, glinting in the harsh light of the autopsy room, and in place of the Weevil’s eye, there seemed to be a strange sort of rotating camera lens.

Slicing through into the chest of the Weevil proved to be even stranger. The ribs seemed to be made of solid wood, but he cracked them open and separated the cage in order to get a better look at the inside of the creature. An apparatus made of gears and plastic tubes and something close to air pumps had forever stilled its attempt at an imitation of a heart. As he poked about the corpse, he found that everything else was made of synthetic material as well. He worked a couple of gears free from their shafts and tugged a few plastic tubes loose, setting them aside for testing. He poked his head up from the sunken-in autopsy bay, tugging down the mask Ianto had insisted he wear.  
  
“So this is weird…” He waited for the inevitable congregation outside of his autopsy bay. Ianto was absent, hovering a good distance from the medbay but obviously listening. “This Weevil isn’t a normal Weevil. I’m not sure why, but its insides are inorganic materials: metal, plastic, wood, glass. Mostly different types of metals, it seems.” Gwen opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “It’s not a fake Weevil, if that’s what’s you’re about to ask. Its inner structure is exactly the same as that of a regular Weevil, but nearly every organ has been replaced by gears or pumps or tubes or flasks.”  
  
Tosh frowned, tapping her pen on the railing. “How? Someone hasn’t been operating on Weevils, have they?”  
  
“No, I don’t think so. There doesn’t seem to be any scarring, or obvious areas where organic material stops and other materials begin.” He gestured to the gears and tubes in a petri dish sitting on the other table, ready to be tested. “I’m gonna run some tests and things, doctor stuff, see if there’s anything I can pick up. Meantime, I suppose we should keep an eye out for any more of these things.”  
  
“I can mark the unique ionisation we saw with this Weevil and designate a program to alert us if any more come up on our radar.” Already talking programming to herself, Tosh went back to her station, fingers soon furiously tapping at her keyboard. Gwen tapped out a beat on the railing with her palms.  
  
“I suppose I’ll let the local force know to contact us if there’s anything else like that around.”  
  
“Tell your cop buddy to quit nosing around in our business while you’re at it.”  
  
Gwen frowned at him, looking slightly irritated. He grinned inwardly. “You know very well that I can’t. He’s my main contact with the force. And he believes aliens exist.”  
  
“He calls them spooky-do’s, Gwen.”  
  
“At least he doesn’t write them off as Halloween pranks in the middle of June!”  
  
“All right, go on. Indulge yourself.”  
  
“Oh, piss off.” Gwen rolled her eyes and went up to the gantry to make her call.  
  
Owen looked at the mess of his autopsy room and decided that it was time for Mr. Weevil to go into the temporary morgue so he could save it for more testing later.  
  
“Oi! Ianto!” he called to the Welshman, who was fastidiously cleaning the area around Tosh’s workstation. “I know you’re the biggest neat freak this side of the hemisphere, but you need to come help me prep this guy for the morgue. Takes more than one of us to move this beast.”  
  
“Mask,” Ianto insisted as he approached. “I won’t do it unless we wear masks.”  
  
“All right, all right! Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Here.” Ianto took the proffered mask and hooked it round his ears, then pulled on a pair of gloves, still eyeing the corpse even as he joined Owen in the autopsy bay.  
  
“I still don’t think we should be messing with it,” Ianto commented, trying to touch it with the smallest area of his body that he could, so that he was practically pinching it between thumb and forefinger.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I—I don’t remember. It just feels like there’s something we’re missing, like we should be careful around it.”  
  
“I doubt it’s going to jump up and eat us, Ianto. It looks like something out of an H.G. Wells novel.”  
  
They heaved it onto the other gurney together and slid it into the storage drawer in the wall. Ianto practically ran back up the stairs, ripping off his mask and gloves as he passed Tosh’s desk and shoving them into the bin.  
  
Owen didn’t know what had gotten into his teammate, but for now there were more interesting and important things to focus on. He placed one of the gears into a beaker, covered it in sterilized water, and stuck it under the scanner for Mainframe to analyse. He cut a bit off of the plastic tube, then sliced it open and flattened it between two slides. Under a microscope, it had the smooth, slightly grooved surface of plastic, and yet as he zoomed further in, it seemed more porous and muscle-like. Owen frowned and replaced the plastic piping under the microscope with the metal gear. Once again, it had the craggy, grained appearance of metal until he zoomed in closer, and it became obviously porous and stretched like muscle. He frowned and wished the Mainframe would analyse faster.  
  
He started to play a computer game to combat his boredom as he waited but ended up watching Ianto instead. The man was meticulously neatening and straightening and wiping down everything he could get his hands on. Owen knew the Welshman had always been tidy, but this was bordering on obsessive. Not only that, but he was acting strangely around alien corpses he’d seen a million times, and he was insisting on doing things for reasons he didn’t even seem to know himself. Owen wondered if their leader’s absence had hit Ianto harder than the man had let on.

* * *

  
  
Ianto’s head was hurting again. He was starting to get worried, not that he would ever admit that to Owen or any of the rest of them. If Jack were here… But he wasn't. Ianto shoved the thought, and the pang of hurt that accompanied it, back into its accustomed slot. It didn't seem to fit.

He'd just banged his head good, of course it hurt. But his thoughts were all jumbled together, sloshing round inside his skull like flotsam round the piers, and he couldn't concentrate. Or couldn't stop concentrating, he wasn't sure which.  
  
He wandered over near Owen's workstation. He had a solitaire game up on his monitor, but he wasn't playing it. He was tapping his hands arrhythmically on his thighs and watching Ianto. Ianto gave him a tight smile — _Everything's fine, stop checking up on me, doctor_ — and asked, “Any results from your tests, yet?” They needed to figure out what had happened to the Weevil. It was important. If only he could _remember_.  
  
“Still waiting on Mainframe. How're you feeling? Ready for me to check you over?”  
  
Ianto shook his head. “No need. It was just a little bump.”  
  
There was a spot on the edge of Owen's desk, spilled coffee maybe, and he reached out to wipe it off with his thumb. It was dried on, tacky and stiff against his skin, but eventually he flaked it off. The laminate was stained underneath, and he rubbed at it. Back and forth, harder, until the friction of it heated the edge of his thumb.  
  
“—anto. _Ianto_.” Owen grabbed his wrist, fingers painfully tight, and shook it.  
  
Ianto shook his head and frowned. How long had Owen been trying to get his attention? Maybe he did have a concussion. He pulled his hand free of Owen's grip.  
  
“Sorry,” he muttered.  
  
“Shit!”  
  
Ianto turned to see Tosh grab frantically for her mug of pens and miscellaneous tools. She knocked it over at least three times a week, bumping it with a stray elbow when she got absorbed in her work. She was too slow this time. It glanced off her fingers and rolled across her workstation, scattering tools like shrapnel. Gwen choked back a laugh from across the room and then yelled an unapologetic, “Sorry, Tosh!”  
  
Tosh just muttered something annoyed under her breath and started gathering her things. She scooped up everything on the desk and dumped it back in the mug, then got up and started picking up the stuff on the floor. She was elbow-deep in her rubbish bin when Ianto remembered he'd tossed his dirty gloves and mask in there.  
  
“Tosh!” he said, voice sharp with panic.  
  
She froze. “What?”  
  
“The Imprefly species is a bispacial parasite of rudimentary intelligence,” he said.  
  
“What?” she said again, this time sounding more irritated than scared.  
  
Ianto echoed the question in his own head. Sudden panic squeezed his throat shut. He hadn't meant to say that. He'd never even heard of the Imprefly species, as far as he knew.  
  
His head throbbed in sick waves. “I don't know,” he said. What the hell was happening to him?

* * *

  
  
“Ianto….what was that?”  
  
“Really. I don’t know.”

Owen gripped his teammate’s wrist again. “Ianto. Tell me you’ve randomly acquired nerd-boy Tourette’s, or that you’ve not slept in 72 hours and you’re going mad. Or something. Where did that come from?”  
  
Ianto shook his head, obediently following the medic back down into the sunken room. “I really, really don’t know, Owen.”  
  
A shaft of worry lanced through Owen’s gut, and he pushed Ianto down into a chair. It was one thing to have a periodically anal-retentive team member who knew everything, having a team member who spouted useless information without knowing why was a whole new can of worms.  
  
Suddenly Ianto looked up again, panicked face turned towards Toshiko, who had restarted her exploration of the rubbish bin. “Tosh, don’t! I put my mask and gloves in that bin.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“Just…don’t. They might be contaminated?” He frowned as he finished his sentence, like he didn’t know why he thought that. Tosh pulled her hands from the bin and put them cautiously onto her keyboard, still watching Ianto.  
  
Owen put a hand on Ianto’s shoulder. “Listen, mate. I think you got knocked pretty hard out there.”  
  
“I didn’t. It barely hurt.”  
  
The alarm went off as Owen opened his mouth to respond. He sighed. “Another one?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I should stay here at the Hub. Mainframe will be done with the analysis soon, maybe it can tell us something we don’t already know. Ianto, you up for taking my place?”  
  
“I told you, I’m fine.”  
  
Ianto got up and, grumbling, trudged towards the kitchen to get his gun. Owen turned to Tosh. “Keep an eye on him, alright? I don’t know what’s going on. But I really don’t like it.”  
  
“Will do.”

* * *

  
  
Ianto slid into the back seat of the SUV and slammed the door behind him. Tosh rode shotgun, Rift monitor in hand, and Gwen had insisted on driving—a decision he couldn't argue with, considering.

He tried to focus on the matter at hand, on this new creature they were about to go after and what the vitally important thing he couldn't remember was, but if he was honest with himself—God forbid— he was terrified. His head still hurt, long, rolling shudders of pain that travelled from the nape of his neck up to his hairline and exploded behind his eyes like flares. He was unravelling the threads from his jacket cuff, one colour at a time, and laying them across his knee and he didn't even know why.  
  
“Seventy-three parsecs from the Mandora Galaxy, and one point seven light years from the planet Aftorecora,” his mouth said. Gwen and Tosh exchanged significant glances but didn't say anything to him. That was something, at least. Now he wasn't even stating complete thoughts. He worried at the missing information like his fingers worried at the hem of his cuff.  
  
“We're closing in on the signal, Owen,” Gwen said. “Can you pull the CCTV and let us know what exactly we're heading into?”  
“It looks like it's just outside a shopping arcade. Lots of people about.”  
  
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit! Are there any civilians down?”  
  
“We're not coppers, Gwen.”  
  
“Owen! _Are_ there?”  
  
“Not that I can see.”  
  
“Thank God.”  
  
The SUV swerved round a corner, throwing Ianto up against the door. Tosh yelled something at Gwen, but Ianto missed it as another huge wave of pain clenched his teeth together. He closed his eyes and tried to ride it out as they slammed to a stop.  
  
“We're here.”  
  
“Try to take this one alive, yeah? I might be able to learn more from it if it's still ticking, so to speak.”  
  
“We'll do our best.” Gwen replied. “Ianto! Come on!”  
  
Ianto opened his eyes. The pain was draining away again, leaving him dizzy with relief. He pulled his gun out—whatever Owen said, he wasn't going to let this thing get close to him. And then he froze.  
  
“Ianto!” Tosh came up to his window, wearing a frown that somehow contained both irritation and concern. “Come on,” she said.  
  
He stared at the inside of the door with mounting panic. The arrangement of buttons and levers looked utterly alien, a confusing system he couldn't begin to untangle. He knew it was a door. He knew he needed to open it. He could remember opening this _exact same door_ thousands of times before. He met Tosh's eyes though the glass, ignoring the pale, mad face of his reflection.  
  
“What's wrong?” she asked. “Open the door and get out here!”  
  
He swallowed. “I don't know how.”

* * *

  
  
“Tosh, just leave him there! The creature’s on the move.”

  
“Alright.”  
  
As Owen watched, the little blinking dot indicating Tosh moved away. He yanked nervously at the bottom of his coat, half-wishing he was out there. Ianto’s breathing was harsh and loud in the comm. in his ear. Worry was clawing at his belly now, a weird panicked anxiety that this wasn’t something he could easily fix.  
  
“Ianto.”  
  
“Owen,” Ianto’s voice was strained. “The Yggbrixia galaxy is shaped like an enormous tree and holds over five thousand planets.”  
The pounding of feet from Gwen or Tosh’s comm sounded in his ear, a yell of rage. He blocked them out despite their volume.  
  
“Okay. That’s nice.” He took a deep breath and steeled himself to sound much calmer than he felt. He could feel sweat sliding down the side of his face. “Ianto, you’re going to need to calm down for me. Don’t talk. Just breathe, all right? Sit in the car and breathe. It’s gonna be okay.”  
  
Ianto’s loud breathing quieted to rasping huffs as Owen typed commands for Mainframe into his computer.  
  
“Ianto, I’m searching your symptoms on Mainframe. Not sure if I’ll get anything back, but I’m trying.”  
  
“I don’t know. I’m going mad, Owen.”  
  
“Just sit tight. We’ll figure it out.”  
  
“The Capetae are a species of alien that spend half of their lives hibernating in a web-like cocoon. Shit!”  
  
Owen frowned. “Figuring out faster.”  
  
The other computer monitor beeped. He tapped in commands and brought up the window. His lips curled in concentration, he read through the information, deciphering Mainframe’s techno-medical-babble as fast as if it was English. “What? That has to be wrong. Run it again.” He repeated the command. A mechanical voice told him that the results were the same.  
  
“Owen?” Tosh was out of breath. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Well, either Mainframe has gone as crazy as our Ianto, or something is very weird here.”  
  
“Mainframe is never wrong.”  
  
“That’s what I was afraid of.”  
  
The harsh shrill of screams and a roar echoed through the comms and Owen flinched instinctively. Ianto’s quiet groaning was barely audible, and Owen wondered if he was maybe covering his mouth to muffle the terrified sounds.  
  
“Owen?” Tosh was yelling down the comm. line, voice frantic. “What’s going on?”  
  
“The gears I took from the Weevil. They’re not inorganic. They’ve got the Weevil’s DNA and everything. They grew inside the Weevil, naturally. Like a tumour or something.”  
  
“Run the tests again.”  
  
Owen punched in the command for a full test repeat.

* * *

  
  


Ianto breathed. He didn't think about the screams coming from outside the SUV, or the suddenly unfamiliar door that trapped him as effectively as a cell, or the test results Owen was telling them about, or the random facts spilling from his lips. He closed his eyes, and he breathed.  
  
Who knew Owen's voice could be so reassuring? He was only humouring the madman, but Ianto didn't care. Frankly, this was more than he could deal with. The inside of his own head had been the one place he'd always been safe. _Had_ been.  
  
The pain took over again, and Ianto couldn't even remember to breathe. It squeezed out everything. Filled him up, then hollowed him out. When it passed, he couldn't have said whether he'd been swallowed up by it for a minute or an hour.  
  
But he remembered how to work the door. It made sense again, as inexplicably as it had become alien before. And he would be damned if he was going to sit in here with nothing to distract him from his fear when Tosh and Gwen were out there risking their lives.  
  
He opened the door and ran toward the screaming.

* * *

  
  


“Tosh?”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“Ow.” Owen shook his head to get the reverberations of Toshiko’s yell out of his ears. “I’ve rerun the tests. Something is very wrong.”  
  
“With Mainframe?”  
  
“No. With our creature and our Weevil.” The sense of dread in his stomach was doing the exact opposite of what he wished it would do. It would’ve been fine if Jack was here. If Jack was here, he’d know something about this insanity, or at least know how to figure something out. As it was, he was missing, and Owen’s hands were shaking so badly he could barely type.  
  
“The makeup of the gears and tubes inside our clockwork Weevil is exactly the same as DNA of the Weevil itself. The tests came back the same. Whatever’s made the Weevil like that is organic. And it grows and changes. And it’s not in our files.”

* * *

  
  
There were a few bodies on the ground, some of them still moving, but none of them were Tosh or Gwen, so Ianto just jumped over them. He'd learnt he couldn't stop and think about the casualties until after or he'd freeze up, but he couldn't help but cringe at the thought of how much Retcon it was going to take to sort this mess out. As he ran, he realised he was screaming, “Known as 'The Oncoming Storm', though the reasons for this moniker are unknown,” as if it were a battle cry.  
  
“Ianto? What are you doing? Get your arse back in the car! I told you to stay put!”  
  
“Not now, Owen.” He wasn't some fainting maiden to be protected, and he wasn't going to wait on the sidelines and let his teammates take a bullet for him.  
  
He found Tosh and Gwen round the corner, at the mouth of a service alley. They had the creature cornered against a skip. It wasn't a Weevil, this time. It was hard to tell exactly what it was, or more accurately, what it had been, but something about the tilt of the head made Ianto think it had once been a large dog. Now it was some kind of steampunk nightmare.  
  
Tosh spun round at the sound of his approach. “Ianto!”  
  
“Tosh, focus!” Gwen yelled. “Owen, nothing we've tried to subdue this thing has even made it blink. We're going to have to go for the kill.”  
  
“Do it.”  
  
Ianto skidded to a stop and took aim. Tosh and Gwen fired at almost the same instant he did. The rattle of ricocheting bullets echoed round the alley. The dog-shaped automaton gave a furious screech, the sound of metal scraping against metal, and charged.  
  
They scattered. Ianto ended up pressed against a wall next to Gwen. The creature went after Tosh, leaving its flank exposed, and Ianto squeezed off another shot. A dent appeared in the brass plate that covered its side, but the thing didn't even seem to notice.  
  
“Shit,” Gwen said, half under her breath. “Our guns are useless. What the hell are we supposed to do now?”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen ran through the material on the screen, his eyes skimming across reams of information. Things added up, but they were still strange. Urgency gripped him as the facts on the screen became clear.  
  
“Get out of there, guys. Seriously, get out.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Get out.” He gripped the edge of the desk like it would help him control the events he was hearing through his earpiece. “Mainframe came back with more test results. Whatever’s converting these animals is a biological agent of some sort. You need to retreat and get back here.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Biological agent. That was the key. Even as Gwen and Owen shouted at each other, even as he bolted from his hiding place, emptying his clip at the automaton to distract it long enough for Tosh to get out, he was rummaging through his memories, searching for the thread he'd had and lost in the old pump station. They were halfway to the SUV when he found it. He chased it down, other data skimming past the surface of his mind as he located what he was looking for.  
  
“It's a virus!” he shouted.  
  
Tosh looked back at him, still running. “Is he doing it again?” she asked Gwen.  
  
“No!” Ianto stopped, held his head. The pain was coming back, he could feel it. It was going to be a bad one. He could hear the clang and hiss of the creature behind him. “This thing— whatever's turning things into these clockwork replicas— it's a virus.” He looked up, met Tosh's eyes, saw Gwen gesturing frantically from the front of the SUV. “It's contagious.”  
  
His head split open and darkness spilled out, filling up his vision.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen watched the sleeping figure on the ratty sofa. Tosh was sitting nearby, wringing her hands the way she did when she was worried. Owen tapped a foot against the leg of the desk and drummed the top in counterpoint. Ianto slept on.  
  
“Maybe it’s just the concussion.” Owen wished Tosh would act a bit more Torchwood and assume the worst first rather than the best. It generally helped morale when what was assumed was the last thing that actually occurred.  
  
“I hope so. I still want to do a bunch of scans on him. He’s acting weird. Well, weirder than usual. I need to make sure that if it is the concussion, there’s no permanent brain damage.”  
  
The man on the sofa groaned softly and stirred, eyelids fluttering. An arm slid off the cushions and dangled in the air, fingertips nearly brushing the floor. Owen scooted his chair closer, tapping Ianto gently on the cheek.  
  
“Ianto? You alive in there?”  
  
“Nnggh.” Ianto’s eyes opened and he blinked up at them. “Wha’ happened?”  
  
“You collapsed. You’re a lucky bugger, too. You landed on Tosh, so you managed not to hit your head a second time.”  
  
Tosh smiled nervously. She had scrapes on her elbows. “Happy to be of service.”  
  
Owen shook his head, brushing aside her failed attempt to lighten the situation, and turned back to his patient. Putting a hand under one shoulder, he helped Ianto to sit up.  
  
“What was all that about back there? You said the biological agent in the Weevil was a contagious virus.”  
  
“I don’t remember.”  
  
“Maybe he did hit his head,” Tosh offered.  
  
“All right, Ianto. Let’s go to the medbay and I’ll give you a good old-fashioned brain scan.”  
  
“With alien tech.”  
  
“With alien tech, yes. But still, it feels like a normal brain scan. Can you stand?”  
  
“Yeah.” He stood with only a slight wobble.  
  
Owen resisted the urge to take Ianto by the arm and lead him into the medbay. He generally tried not to treat his patients like invalids, but sometimes it was almost impossible not to feel like they might fall over and break.  
  
Ianto settled himself on the autopsy table-cum-examination bed and folded his arms over his chest. Efficient, even in the face of insanity. Owen pulled over the alien-modified CAT scan machine and set it up above Ianto. Instead of a full-circle machine that the patient was passed through, it was a half-circle that was passed over the patient, and the alien tech did the rest. It helped for big aliens and claustrophobic patients, and Owen liked it because it was mobile and didn’t crowd out his examination area.  
  
“Just stay as still as you can, alright?”  
  
“Got it.”  
  
Ianto didn’t move a muscle as the crescent passed over him three times, whirring softly. Owen had to give him credit, because it did tend to feel like a giant alien claw was hovering over your head. He tapped him on the shoulder when the scans were done.  
  
“Up. I’m gonna test your reflexes and all that while the scans are compiling.”  
  
“And then what? Take my temperature, check my tonsils, stick your hand up my bum?”  
  
“Not into that stuff, mate. This is general procedure for concussions. Deal with it.”  
  
“I don’t like being prodded.”  
  
“No one does.” Ianto’s leg jumped as the little rubber hammer tapped at his knee. “You’re all right. Checking your pupils and then no more prodding, alright?”  
  
Owen couldn’t decide whether to feel comforted or further concerned as he finished his examination. Ianto didn’t have a major concussion, which was good. He wasn’t acting all weird anymore, but he also couldn’t remember why he’d thought the biological agent was a contagious virus. That was worrying. And probably not good.  
  
He wished for a moment that he didn’t have the Torchwood instinct of assuming the worst, because the worst was not anything he wanted to think about. He and Ianto might not have had the most wonderful of relationships, but they were friends, and family in the loose sense that they spent most of their time with each other, and Owen did in fact care what happened to him.  
  
The computer beeped and displayed all the scans in tiny little boxes on the screen. Owen squinted at them. Then enlarged the first one and frowned. Closed that one and enlarged the next. His frown deepened.  
  
“Owen?”  
  
Ianto was peering at him, but Owen wasn’t listening. His eyes were locked on the screen, breath rising into harsh gulps of air. He’d seen that before. A very visible anomaly was apparent on the scan of Ianto’s brain. A small, twisted shape towards the back of the brain cutting through the usual folds, a tumour-like outline that made his gut clench.  
  
Owen’s body washed hot then cold then hot again. He rushed to the restroom without a word and hunched over the toilet. His lunch came back up with a rush of hot acid and he didn’t know whether it was tears or vomit that burned the back of his throat and forced out a sound that would’ve been embarrassing had he been able to care. He couldn’t go through this again. He _couldn’t._  
  
He rested his head against the tiles, the cold porcelain a stark contrast to his own burning skin. He wiped his nose and mouth with the back of his hand and didn’t move. He hadn’t been able to prevent it before, maybe he could now. Still, he felt like he just wanted to hide away until everything was over.  
  
“Owen?” A tentative hand touched his shoulder, then shook him when he didn’t reply. “What was that about? Are you okay? Am I okay?” Ianto’s voice rose in volume and pitch. “I’m not, am I? What’s going on? What’s wrong with me?”  
  
“You—” Owen’s voice creaked and he coughed, wiping at tears he blamed on the gag reflex. “Shit. There’s something in your head. In your brain. Something that’s not supposed to be there.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Owen turned, studiously ignoring Ianto’s flinch as the Welshman took in his appearance. “I don’t know what I mean. There’s a tumour or a–an alien or something in your head. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that it’s not good.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen's words punched through Ianto's chest like a bullet. Something in his brain? Something Owen couldn't identify? He could feel himself starting to shake a little and shut down that line of thought before it undid him. Owen was pale, sweaty, his eyes sunken and his mouth thinned into a tight grimace of horror. The toilet stank of vomit. He wasn't this upset just because Ianto had something growing inside his skull. Ianto took a deep breath and tried to deal with the immediate situation before he freaked out about the results of the scan.  
  
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. This is . . . bad. But we've dealt with worse, right?”  
  
“Of course it's bad! We don't even know _how_ bad!” Owen pulled himself to his feet and stumbled out of the stall. He leant against the basin, turned on the tap and plunged his hands under the water. “And if it's not fucked up enough already, I don't know if there's any way to figure out exactly what that thing in you is. Alien, mineral, vegetable, the usual tumour...”  
  
“Owen. Calm down. We'll figure this out. You're a great doctor, and we have the full Torchwood archives at our disposal. You'll figure it out, and you'll fix it. I have complete confidence in you.”  
  
Owen spun and glared at him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ianto,” he said, sarcasm raw and vicious. “But I'm not perfect. I'm basically an alien coroner half the time. I can't fix everything!”  
  
Ianto took a step closer. Owen could be as nasty and violent as he liked— all of Ianto's capacity for fear was currently gibbering in a corner of his mind, still stuck on _a tumour or an alien or something in your head_. “What's really going on here, Owen?”  
  
“I told you, I don't know. All the scan showed was the anomaly, it didn't identify it. It could be—”  
  
“No. What's going on with you?”  
  
“I don't know what you mean.” Owen sneered and turned back to the basin to splash water on his face.  
  
Ianto narrowed his eyes. “Bollocks. You're just going to give up this easy? This stupid little tumour's too big and scary for you and you're going to let it beat you before you even start to fight?”  
  
“Oh, shut it! You have no idea what you're talking about. Why don't you go and make me a coffee instead of trying to tell me how to do my job?”  
  
“I'm not telling you _how_ to do your job, Dr. Harper. I'm just telling you to _do_ it.”  
  
“Bugger off! You don't know anything!” Owen shouted. He was wild-eyed, breathing in harsh gasps. He yelled an incoherent syllable and slammed a fist into the tiling next to the mirror. Ianto flinched at the dull crack it made. The impact seemed to shock all the rage out of Owen and he sagged against the wall, forehead pressed against the cool porcelain, shoulders shaking.  
  
Ianto let his voice soften and dropped it into the silence. “I know that I need you, Owen. I need you to be your usual cocky, competent self.” He stepped forward and tentatively put his hand on Owen's arm. “I'm terrified.”  
  
Owen gave a strained, unconvincing chuckle. “Me, too, mate,” he said without looking up.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“This happened before and I couldn't do a thing and look where that got me. Stuck in here with you lot. And now it's happening again.”  
  
“It's happened before?” Something cold and sharp coiled through Ianto's gut, something that could have been dread or hope. “What are you talking about?”  
  
Owen didn't even seem to hear him. “Jack knew what was going on and he could've saved her. He could've. But he—”  
  
“Could have saved who?”  
  
“I was useless. I just stood there whilst she was dying. Just stood there! And Jack came in and none of it made any sense—”  
  
“You're not making any sense. Owen, what happened? Someone died from this? Jack was involved? When was this?”  
  
“I can't do this again. I just can't.”  
  
Ianto tried desperately to tamp down on the panic rising inside of him. “Owen, calm down. _Talk to me_. You have to tell me what happened.”  
  
“It doesn't matter.”  
  
“I think it does!”  
  
Owen turned on him, angry again, but this was more of a cold, bitter anger, not the wild, frantic rage of before. “Leave it, Ianto. I don't want to talk about it.”  
  
“If this has anything to do with what's wrong with me—”  
  
“It doesn't. It can't be connected. This is my own shit, teaboy. It's none of your business.”  
  
“Owen—”  
  
“You're not the only one whose girlfriend was killed by Torchwood, okay?” Owen glared at him, then shoved him aside and stalked out.  
  
Ianto stood alone in the toilet, staring at the door Owen had slammed behind him. The only sound was his own breath echoing off the tiled walls. He didn't know how Owen had come to work at Torchwood. It was in the archive, but he'd never bothered to specifically look it up. He tried to call it to mind now, but his concentration was still shot from the fight and . . . everything.  
  
Everything. God. His hand drifted up to his scalp and hovered without touching it. There was something in there. In his brain. His skin twitched and his gut twisted in on itself. He clenched his hand and forced it back to his side, though he wanted to start clawing at his head. _Get it out._ he prayed— to whom, he had no idea. Owen, maybe. _Please, get it out of me right now._  
  
He supposed having some kind of tumour or alien parasite was better than simply going mad. At least he had a reason for how he'd been acting, right? He swallowed and straightened his waistcoat. Right. He was going to keep thinking that until he started to believe it.  
  
He smoothed his hair, wiped the fear-sweat off his face with a towel, tightened his tie, and checked himself in the mirror. There was an entirely separate crisis going on out there right now, and he needed to help Tosh and Gwen deal with it. A thought froze him halfway to the door. _Was_ it totally separate? Whatever it was turning Weevils and animals into automatons . . . they didn't know how it started. Owen said Ianto himself had told them it was a contagious virus right before he blacked out. Could he…  
  
The idea of turning into one of those half-alive machines flushed over him in a cold sweat of panic. Not that. _Anything_ but that. To end up like all his friends in London had, like _Lisa_ — He closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the overwhelming wave of nausea that choked him. When he was reasonably sure he wasn't about to sick up all over himself, he strode out of the toilet and headed for the autopsy bay. He needed to talk to Owen.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen clattered about in his medbay, slamming tools around and tossing things into the bin with excessive force. It was bad enough that Jack was missing and Ianto was messed up. Now he had to be slapped in the face with the visceral reminder of his dead fiancée in the form of his colleague’s brain scan. He thought he’d joined Torchwood to avoid shit like this.  
  
“Owen?” Ianto appeared on the steps in front of him, leaning heavily on the railing. His face was white with flushes of colour high on his cheeks. He was breathing shallowly, sweat beaded on his upper lip. “I just had a thought.”  
  
“What?” He looked away from Ianto, down at his hands clenched on the tabletop. He didn’t like seeing that fearful edge of hysteria and pain on the Welshman’s face, eyes red from keeping tears at bay. It was what Katie had looked like for weeks after she’d first started showing symptoms.  
  
“That Weevil we have. The mechanical virus. What if—” Ianto stopped, his throat working like he couldn’t get the words out, like there was something stuck in his throat or trying to come up.  
  
Owen looked up. “What if…?”  
  
“What if…” Ianto gestured to his own head, flinching back from touching it.  
  
Oh. _Oh._  
  
Owen’s mind shied away from that possibility just as vehemently as it had from the other one, but he nodded, hoping his fear didn’t show on his face.  
  
“Okay. I don’t know. I didn’t check the Weevil’s brain, only its torso. If I do a brain scan of some sort, maybe we can compare it with yours.”  
  
Ianto nodded and half-turned on his heel. “I–I like that idea. In the meantime, I think I’ll try to restore a little normality and make some coffee.”  
  
Owen watched him walk away, back ramrod straight, fists balled up at his sides, face stoically impassive. Ianto was strong, much stronger than the rest of them. Certainly stronger than him. He didn’t know what the team would do without Ianto to quietly hold them together. He pushed that thought forcibly away.  
  
The coffee came down as he was pulling the Weevil from its body bag. He was wearing a mask and gloves and full smock. When he looked up to thank Ianto, the Welshman was also wearing gloves and a mask.  
  
“Why—”  
  
“Just a precaution, Owen. I just…I don’t want to be responsible for any of you getting infected.”  
  
“If anyone’s going to be responsible, it’s this guy.” Owen pointed at the dead Weevil before him. “But I’m about to do a brain scan and we’ll figure it out.”  
  
“How do we cure it, if that’s what’s in me?”  
  
“I don’t know. You’re Mr. Genius. You tell me, since you were babbling about it so much before.”  
  
“I don’t remember anything about it. I don’t know how I knew that. I mean, maybe I read it somewhere. I always remember everything I read. But now I can’t remember at all.”  
  
“Well, we’re about to find out. You know—”  
  
Alarms blared from the area around Tosh’s station. A clatter and a string of curses preceded the technician as she ran back to her chair. Her hands flew over the keyboard as her eyes flicked back and forth from screen to screen.  
  
“There’re reports coming in. Signals of the ionisation of the virus-infected individuals are bouncing back from all over the city. Most of the signals coming back seem to be—” She paused, swallowing. “Seem to be human.”  
  
Owen hit the table with a hand. “Shit!”  
  
“What can we do?” Gwen asked, tossing the bottle of retcon she’d been distributing to the locals who saw the dog-thing they’d tried to catch onto her desk. “As far as we know, there’s no cure. Or at least, we don’t know about one.”  
  
“And we can’t go out and kill everyone who gets infected. That’s too much damage.”  
  
Owen nodded. “So we all agree that we should stay here and try to figure this out.” Nods all around. “Tosh, keep an eye on those signals. Hunt around in Interpol files and such, see if there’s anything there. Ianto, I’d feel a lot safer if you stayed up here with me, just in case. That all right? Good. That means you, Gwen, have to go down in the archives and look for anything at all that might be relevant.”  
  
“Don’t mess up my files!” Ianto called as Gwen marched down to the basement archives.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Ianto took his coffee up onto the walkway that overlooked the autopsy bay, where he could watch what Owen was doing but didn't have to worry as much about what germs he was breathing out when he took his mask off to drink.  
  
Owen was setting up the scanner around the body of the infected Weevil. Whatever he found in the creature's skull, it wouldn't be good news. Either Ianto was infected with the same virus— one they didn't have a name for, let alone a cure— or he had something else in his head that they had no clue about. But he still couldn't keep from watching. He wanted to know, one way or the other.  
  
He buried his face in the steam from his mug, inhaling the rich comfort of coffee smell. Coffee didn't fix anything, but it made everything look a bit more manageable. He wanted to drink it slowly, to savour it, but once he tasted it he couldn't bear to stop. He drained the mug. He could just go make himself another once Owen finished—  
  
Everything went black.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen couldn’t decide what to hope for: that the thing in Ianto’s brain was the strange virus and they might be able to fight to create a cure, or that it was something entirely new that they could figure out how to fix. He concentrated on the work in front of him and tried futilely to keep his hands from shaking.  
  
“Come on, Harper,” he muttered to himself. “Do your job!”  
  
The Weevil was lying on the table, and Owen pulled the modified CAT scanner over. He could feel Ianto’s eyes on him from above; he didn’t have the heart to tell him not to watch. As he punched numbers in, a part of his mind happily pondered over the possibility that it could be a glitch in the system. He wanted to punch himself in the head. He was a doctor; he knew that denial wasn’t going to help anyone.  
  
The scan started up with a soft beep. Then a crash sounded from above, the sound of coffee waterfalling through the grate to the floor below echoing far too loud in Owen’s ears.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
He couldn't see anything. Couldn't hear anything. Couldn't _feel_ anything. He couldn't even tell if he was still breathing. Was he dead? Had he had an aneurism or something? Everyone they'd brought back with the glove had described death as darkness, emptiness. The thought of being stuck like this forever choked him with claustrophobia.  
  
And then words formed. He didn't hear them, exactly. It was more like he thought them— but they weren't his. They resounded around and within him.  
  
[ERROR]  
  
[CRITICAL ERROR]  
  
Information cascaded through his mind, too fast for him to process. Diagrams. Text. Cranial cross-sections, most of them of nonhuman brains. Karyotypes.  
  
[INTERFACE FAILURE]  
  
It sounded like a computer, but Ianto could feel a presence behind the voice.  
  
[DEATH IMMINENT]  
  
  


* * *

  
  
It took him all of three seconds to drop everything and race up the gantry to Ianto’s side. The archivist was still as a statue, face devoid of emotion or presence. Owen gripped him by the shoulders and turned him. He came easily, still perfectly posed and completely absent.  
  
“Ianto?” He passed a hand over the young man’s eyes. His gaze did not move, didn’t follow. It was as if he’d gone catatonic. Then his mouth opened.  
  
“Error.”  
  
“What the _fuck_?”  
  
“Critical error.” Ianto’s voice was emotionless, without inflection. It reminded Owen of a computer. It terrified him.  
  
Owen was near to hyperventilation as he shook his teammate in attempts to jerk him back to awareness. Fear was dancing up and down his spine, clawing at his stomach. This was nothing like Katie, nothing like the crazed steampunk Weevils and dog-like automaton things they’d seen. This was completely new and Owen was terrified.  
  
“Death imminent.”  
  
That shook him to the core. “Oh no, no, no, no, no. You’re not dying on my watch. I’m not losing another person to some fucking alien in their head. Ianto!” He grabbed the Welshman by the shoulder and began to jerk him back and forth. “You are not dying if I can help it! What the hell does that even mean? Wake up. Ianto!”  
  
Ianto’s eyes slammed shut and his whole body stiffened like a board. Owen could barely feel the pulse under his fingertips as he put a hand to Ianto’s wrist. Everything was still.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
With a gasp, Ianto plunged back into the world. Owen was standing next to him, shaking his arm and shouting something into his face. The lights were bright, disorientating, blinding. He sagged against the railing and nearly fell, his muscles not braced for still being on his feet. He pushed weakly at Owen.  
  
“What—what just happened?” he asked.  
  
“Oh, thank God,” Owen said. “And I could ask you the same thing!”  
  
The clang of hard-soled shoes against the metal grating sounded like automatic weapons fire. “What's going on?” Tosh asked sharply from the doorway.  
  
“Ianto just had some kind of fit,” Owen said.  
  
“Oh my God,” she said.  
  
Ianto stood back up and brushed Owen's hands away in annoyance. “I'm fine,” he said. And now that he'd had a second to adjust, he was. It had felt like being jerked awake in an unfamiliar place and the feeling was fading fast. But if he concentrated, he could still sense that presence at the very edge of his consciousness. He shook his head.  
  
“Back up and tell me what happened,” he said to Owen.  
  
“I don't know, mate. You dropped your coffee cup and just stood there. Blank. Completely blank. And then you spoke, but your voice had gone all funny. Flat, like.”  
  
“What did I say?”  
  
Something shifted behind Owen's eyes, and he looked away.  
  
“Tell me the truth, Owen. I can take it.”  
  
Owen sighed. “You said, ‘Critical error. Interface failure.’”  
  
Ianto tightened his jaw and nodded. He repeated the last phrase: “‘Death imminent.’”


	2. Part 2

“But what does it mean?” Tosh asked for what must've been the fifth time.  
  
“I don't know, okay?”  
  
Owen sounded pissed off and exhausted, and Ianto knew exactly how he felt. The four of them were huddled around one end of the table in the conference room. They'd called Gwen back from the archive and filled her in on what had happened, and she kept looking at Ianto with a mixture of horror and pity that made him want to snarl at her. Instead, he sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. It was only infuriating because it reminded him that right now he kind of deserved both.  
  
“All right,” she said at last, “let's go over this again. Owen, can you show us the scans themselves?”  
  
“Yeah. Hold on.” Owen stood and went to the terminal that controlled the overhead monitor. “Okay, this is a transaxial scan of Ianto's brain, and we're looking at slice 8. It shows the clearest image of the anomaly.”  
  
Ianto found he could look at it with some degree of equanimity as long as he pretended it wasn't his own brain up there on the screen. It looked like a normal, healthy human specimen, except for the dark tangle that wrapped around the brainstem and sent tendrils questing across and through the rest of it. It had infiltrated almost every lobe, Ianto saw. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and tried not to think about the ramifications of that.  
  
Gwen leant forward and tapped her fingers on the table. “And that isn't the same anomaly as you found in the Weevil?”  
  
“Definitely not.” Owen called up another image. “This is the Weevil's brain scan.”  
  
“That's a _brain scan_?” Tosh asked.  
  
Ianto shared her disbelief. It looked more like a schematic for the mechanism of an old-fashioned clock or loom. Dozens of gears interconnected in a complex pattern, attached to levers and several metal plates that had circular holes punched through them in random patterns. As Ianto looked closer, he noticed that there were still a few masses that looked like brain tissue, linked to the apparatus with small tubes or wires.  
  
“That's what's inside the Weevil's skull. When I saw the results, I opened the skull just to be sure.” He brought up several more photos, these showing the mechanism in place in the skull and partially disassembled on the autopsy table.  
  
Tosh got up and moved closer to the screen, her lips moving soundlessly. She ran a finger over parts of the image in a pattern that only made sense to her, and her gaze unfocussed in that besotted look she only got around new tech. Then she spun, her face breaking into a delighted grin. “It's a difference engine!”  
  
“It's a what?” Gwen asked.  
  
“Well, not exactly. The use of punch cards implies this may actually be closer to the analytical engine, or even something like the Mark I, though using steam instead of electricity. I can't even make out the function of some of these components. The design is beautifully complex.”  
  
Owen rolled his eyes. “Tosh, I realise this is like showing porn to a sex addict, but you need to focus. If you need to step out for a quick wank before you can make sense, we can wait.”  
  
“Owen,” Gwen said warningly. “Tosh, what are you talking about?”  
  
Tosh had turned bright red at Owen's comments, but she turned away from him without responding and addressed Gwen. “It's a computer.”  
  
“A . . . computer? But it's just gears and such.”  
  
“Exactly! Not a microprocessor. The first computers were wholly mechanical. The Antikythera mechanism, probably used for computing astronomical positions, dates from the first century B.C., and Charles Babbage designed the difference engine and the analytical engine in the early nineteenth century. They use gears and punch cards to perform the same types of algorithms a modern computer processes with electric—”  
  
“Tosh,” Gwen interrupted. “Thank you, but that's probably all that the rest of us need to know.”  
  
“Yes, of course. Sorry.”  
  
“Owen, you said Ianto sounded ‘like a computer’ when he spoke.”  
  
“Yeah, he did. Like a bad sci-fi rendition of an android. But there's no correlation between the changes to the Weevil's brain and the inclusion in Ianto's.” Owen switched the image on the screen back to the first scan.  
  
Tosh made a small sound of bereavement, then consoled herself by examining the new image.  
  
“So you're saying we have two different conditions here, completely unrelated, that are both somehow changing people into robots?”  
“It looks that way.”  
  
“Wait," Tosh said. “This hardware in Ianto's brain—”  
  
“It's hardware?” Owen asked sharply. “Not a tumour? Or–or an alien organism?”  
  
“Sort of,” Tosh said. At Owen's glare, she went on hurriedly. “It's definitely tech. See, there, that's metal, not organic material. It fades out on the scan— I think it attenuates into a semiconductor nanowire. There are also several diodes— here, here, and here, for example.”  
  
“So this is some kind of implant?”  
  
“I don't think so. Or at least, the core of it may have been implanted, but this kind of cellular integration would be impossible to achieve through physical insertion. I think it's grown in place. Look, this structure here is distinctly biological. The density is way too low to be inorganic matter.”  
  
“It's nearly isodense,” Owen muttered, leaning in closer. “But these lighter areas— bone? An internal skeletal structure?”  
  
“Metal would show up as a brighter white.”  
  
“You're right.”  
  
Gwen cleared her throat. “As fascinating as this is, you two, could we get a summary? In English?”  
  
Owen straightened and turned. “Essentially, I believe Tosh is right. Whatever's in Ianto's head, it's both some kind of electronic equipment _and_ alive.”  
  
“Biotechnology in the most literal sense of the word,” Tosh added.  
  
“So where does that leave us?”  
  
“I'm not sure,” Owen said. “We still don't know enough. I'll add what we've discovered here to my search parameters and see if it returns anything. So far I haven't had any luck.” He started entering data into the computer.  
  
Tosh sat back down and put her elbows on the table, rubbing at her temples.  
  
Ianto leant over and asked, “Are you all right?”  
  
She looked up and smiled at him, but she was much paler than she had been a moment before, and the skin round her eyes was tight. “Just a headache,” she said.  
  
“Ianto,” Gwen said, catching his attention. “Can you describe again what you experienced in the autopsy bay?”  
  
Anxiety leapt back up, clogging his throat. He'd been managing to ignore it, sitting back and watching Tosh and Owen dissect the case, pretending this was just another Torchwood enigma. Gwen's question reminded him it was happening to him, and his professional distance disappeared like the illusion it was. “I didn't experience much,” he said. “Just blackness and the voice, like I told you earlier.”  
  
“What did the voice sound like to you?”  
  
“I didn't hear it, exactly. It was almost more like I felt it. But it was huge. Overwhelming.”  
  
Gwen patted him on the arm, and it was humiliating that his fear and unhappiness were so apparent. She smiled, and used that gentle croon he'd mentally dubbed her “victim voice” as she asked, “Did it sound like a computer to you?”  
  
He sighed, pulled his hand away and clasped it together with his other one on the table in front of him. You could only see the knuckles turning white if you looked closely. “No. Yes.” He chuckled, then realised that made him sound even more nervous and swallowed. “It was toneless, yes, but I could . . . sense something. A presence. I sound mad, don't I?”  
  
“No, Ianto, of course you don't. Go on.”  
  
“I can't really describe it much better than that. I guess . . . it _sounded_ like a computer, but it didn't _feel_ like a computer. I'm sorry.”  
  
Owen spoke up before Gwen could respond. “Bloody hell, I found something!”  
  
Ianto jerked in his seat. “What? What is it?”  
  
“Hold on... Shit!” He typed frantically for a second. “It's not giving me anything. Just a reference number. When I try to open the file, it just says ‘Restricted’.”  
  
Ianto stood. “Here, let me try. I have Jack's access codes.”  
  
Owen smirked. “Oh, you do, do you? Perks of the job?”  
  
“Ha bloody ha,” Ianto said. He logged in as Jack, tried to open the file again. Still nothing. He used a keyboard shortcut he was sure no one but Jack was supposed to know about and entered the override code. _Still_ nothing. “That's strange...” he said.  
  
“Maybe I can hack into it,” Tosh said.  
  
Ianto made room for her at the keyboard. Owen turned away to talk to Gwen, following her out of the room— he'd never had much interest in the computer side of things. Tosh opened one of her batch files and started recoding it to target the file Owen had found. She was going much slower than normal, so slowly that Ianto could actually follow everything she was doing. He frowned. She paused whilst it ran, finger hovering over the break key. Her hand was shaking.  
  
“Tosh, what's wrong?” he said.  
  
She shook her head, not looking away from the screen. “It's nothing.”  
  
“It's not nothing.” Ianto looked at her more closely, pulled out of his looping dread about what was wrong with him by the sudden concern that there was something wrong with her. She was even paler than she'd been before, and her face glistened with sweat. She kept blinking, like her eyes wouldn't focus right, and her breath came shallow and pained. “Toshiko...”  
  
“I'm just feeling a bit lightheaded all of a sudden, that's all. It's been a long day and I forgot to eat lunch. Oh, hell! It didn't work! I can get _anywhere_ in this system. There can only be one reason I can't access this file.”  
  
He let her distract him for the moment and glanced at the screen, which still read ‘Restricted’. “What's that?”  
  
“It's from Torchwood London.”  
  
“But—” Whatever he'd been about to say was forgotten when he looked back at her. Her face cramped into a grimace of pain, she swayed and blindly reached out a hand to balance herself. He grabbed at it, but before he could get a good grip her eyes rolled back in her head and her knees buckled. “Owen!” he shouted as he lunged forward to catch her before she hit the ground.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Tosh’s computer monitor showed minor amounts of chaos scattered about the city. Owen turned it off. It was useless to think about when they didn’t have the cure.  
  
“This is getting out of hand,” Gwen said quietly.  
  
“You’re telling me.”  
  
He was about to sit down on the couch, put his feet up for a moment, when Ianto’s voice rang out across the Hub, sounding frantic. In the conference room, Ianto was kneeling on the floor with Tosh draped across his lap like some twisted modern-day renaissance painting. This was shaping up to be one of the worst days of Owen’s life. And he’d had some really, _really_ bad days.  
  
“She just collapsed.”  
  
“She said earlier that she had a headache,” Gwen supplied. “Is there something in her head too?”  
  
“I bloody well hope not.”  
  
“Maybe she just has a fever.”  
  
“We’re Torchwood, sweetheart. It’s impossible for us to be that lucky.”  
  
Owen helped Ianto lift Tosh up and carry her to the medbay. They placed her on the table and Owen rifled through a cabinet for a saline drip as Ianto settled her, grabbing a towel and folding it under her head. He slipped the needle into her hand and attached the drip, hoping to keep her hydrated and keep an IV line open for whatever medications might be needed.  
  
“What’s wrong with her?”  
  
“I don’t know, Gwen, let me use my newly developed psychic powers to find out.” Owen gestured rudely with the ear thermometer. He was frustrated. Gwen had a tendency to push and get fussy and he wasn’t a superhero. He couldn’t solve everything for her. She needed to learn to wait or to live with disappointment.  
  
“You don’t need to be an arse about it.” Gwen grumbled, moving to the stairs. “I’ll get her a blanket and pillow or something.”  
“What’s going on? Why does everyone go bleedin’ mad as soon as Jack swans off and leaves us to fend for ourselves? It’s not fair.”  
  
“Karma,” was Ianto’s dry reply. “I think it’s been building up.”  
  
“Wonderful. Hand me that,” Owen commanded, pointing to the Bekaran scanner on the desk. “I’m gonna scan her with it; it’s faster.”  
  
The scanner beeped and flashed blue lights along its sides as he panned it up and down above Tosh’s prone figure. A triple beep and an image of Tosh’s body rotated on the little screen. Owen sagged. His capacity for shock and fear were being severely depleted today. He wanted to curl up into the foetal position and whimper his way to normality. He was having a really bad day.  
“What’s wrong with her?”  
  
Owen handed Ianto the scanner. “Looks like she got infected. Probably when you guys were out chasing that second creature.”  
  
“Shit.”  
  
“My sentiments exactly. It looks like the virus has gotten to parts of her limbs, a couple vertebrae, and her occipital lobe. She may wake up, but she won’t be able to see. Or she will, but it’ll be a machine. Or…something. I don’t know. She seemed to understand the weird thing posing as a brain better than I do.”  
  
“Can we see what happens if we do surgery on her? Take out part of it in her arm or something?”  
  
“It’s replacing her arm bone, but I suppose we could try. There’s all sorts of tech here that can grow a bone back.”  
  
“I think it’s worth a shot.”  
  
Gwen came down with a blanket and pillow as Ianto was rubbing iodine on Tosh’s arm and Owen was carefully injecting a short-term sedative. They both had masks and gloves on.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“Trying something.” Owen informed her shortly. Ianto acted as nurse, standing by with a tray of gauze, forceps, and other tools.  
“Thank the lord for the laser scalpel.”  
  
One pass of the laser scalpel and Tosh’s left arm was open down to the bone. Or, what used to be bone, anyway. Brass gears of varying sizes had replaced the elbow joint, and steel bars wrapped with leather and spongy tan-coloured rubber had replaced bones, muscles, and ligaments.  
  
“ _Jesus._ ” Gwen breathed as she peered down from above. Ianto was already pressing gauze to the edges of the wound to stem the blood.  
  
“You said it.”  
  
Owen gently slid a couple of gears off their axles and dropped them into a separate dish that Ianto held out for him. The Welshman put a lid on the tin and put it on Owen’s workstation. Owen accepted the proffered laser scalpel and bent over Tosh again.  
  
“Shit shit shit!”  
  
“Owen?”  
  
“Look.” Ianto leaned over to follow Owen’s gloved finger. The little brass gears Owen had removed had quickly been replaced by bigger, thicker steel gears, and he could see new layers of rubber had slid up the arm. “It looks like, if I damage it, it simply grows back more rapidly.”  
  
“And bigger, too.”  
  
“So let’s not mess with it.” He closed the arm back up with a pass of the scalpel. “It seems like her body is ossifying, reconstructing itself with things other than bone and tissue.”  
  
They put the tools away and Ianto handed off the gears to the mainframe for analysis. Owen injected Tosh with a medication to wake her from sedation, and they moved her to the sofa. Twenty minutes later, she was making little waking noises, eyelids fluttering.  
  
“Tosh?” Ianto murmured gently. He stood above her. Owen was kneeling beside her, his fingers wrapped doubtfully around her wrist, taking her pulse and feeling incredibly suspicious of whether or not it was a real pulse at all. Tosh woke slowly, rubbing her eyes with her free hand.  
  
“Ianto? Why am I seeing funny? What happened?”  
  
“Seeing funny?” Ianto sounded worried, as worried as he had when he’d been afraid for himself.  
  
“Everything’s….geometric. Calculated, sectioned off. Like–like it’s in binary or something. I…I can’t explain it.”  
  
Owen glanced at Ianto, his expression asking for help. He shrugged lightly. Owen really didn’t know how to break the news gently. There was nothing gentle about it. Ianto frowned but nodded, a silent understanding and go-ahead to say it bluntly.  
  
“Tosh,” he spoke slowly, voice soft and careful in a way he hadn’t used since his days at A&E. “You’ve been infected. It’s affecting your left arm, some of your spine, and your occipital lobe, the part of your brain used for sight.”  
  
“Oh.” Tosh looked shocked. But really, there was no other reaction to be had to information like that. “Can I at least get up and help look for a cure or something? I don’t want to be stuck lying around being useless. I feel alright.”  
  
“Thought you had a headache.”  
  
“It’s gone now.”  
  
Owen chewed his lip. “I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing. But I agree. It’s better to have you working rather than lazing around. We’re already one man down.”  
  
Gwen joined them, sitting in her desk chair. Ianto took Tosh’s chair, and Tosh was seated on the sofa. Owen was seated in his own chair, rolled out into the middle of the space.  
  
“So what happens next?” Gwen asked.  
  
“I say we research the archives. We need to see if there was anything like this ever.” Owen grabbed a pen off his desk and tapped it against his teeth.  
  
“I already did that!”  
  
“Not really, though. We had other stuff to worry about. We need to dig deeper.”  
  
“You could run some tests on me,” Tosh suggested. “I don’t mind.”  
  
“We are _not_ running tests on you. I’m not risking someone else.”  
  
Tosh shrugged, accepting it. “Just offering. I had a program set to trawl the internet for similar things to this. Maybe that found something.”  
  
“Half the time those things turn up conspiracy theorists and half-baked ideas that are only sort of right. This is happening fast and we need something fast.”  
  
“Who died and made you first in command?” Gwen grumbled. Ianto blinked rapidly, his face somewhere in the halfway point of a frown.  
  
“This is a medical-based case. Therefore, it’s my case. Now, can we please get back on topic?”  
  
“Why don’t we catch something that’s infected and run tests on it?”  
  
“A living thing?”  
  
Owen rolled his eyes. “Well, seeing as how we don’t know how to kill it, Gwen, yes. That sounds like a good idea, Tosh.”  
  
Tosh smiled crookedly. “I’ll even make sure it’s not a human. Or wasn’t a human.”  
  
“But what about all the infected people out there? We can’t just leave them, Owen. They’re _people_.”  
  
“Not at the moment, they aren’t. And we can’t do anything if we don’t have a cure. Quit bugging me about it.”  
  
“Owen,” Ianto interjected suddenly from where he’d been quietly sitting. “I had a thought.”  
  
“Alright, you want to put _your_ two cents in, too?”  
  
“No, I mean, I had a thought. Wasn’t mine.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Ianto looked round. All three of his teammates were staring at him with shock and concern. They'd been doing that a lot today. Frankly, it was getting old.  
  
Gwen broached the subject first. “So it was…” She made a vague, questioning shape with her hands.  
  
“Yes. Well, it didn't speak. But it was the same presence.”  
  
Owen broke in, impatient. “So, what was the thought?”  
  
Ianto shook his head. “It's gone, now. If I ever had it in the first place. It was more like, I don't know, like I felt something click. Like when you get an idea out of nowhere? But I didn't get the idea itself. It felt like . . . the presence recognised something.”  
  
The others were still staring at him: Gwen concerned, Tosh intrigued, Owen annoyed.  
  
Ianto shrugged, feeling defensive and irritated about it. “It happened right when you were talking about the archives.”  
  
There was a long, considering silence, and then Tosh abruptly said, “This is more important.”  
  
“What?” Gwen protested. “But the virus is spreading like wildfire all over Cardiff!”  
  
“Tosh is right, Gwen,” Owen said. “We need to stop this, to save everybody, but the team has to come first.”  
  
“But, Tosh, you—”  
  
Shaking her head, Tosh interrupted her. “This thing in Ianto, it said death was imminent. I'm not dying, at least not yet. I have some time. Besides, we don't have any evidence that this virus is going to kill me at all. Not really.”  
  
“What it's doing to you is _worse_ than death.”  
  
“Is it?” Tosh smiled, a little too brightly. “One could argue that it's only natural I'd turn into a computer.”  
  
Ianto reached out and squeezed her hand. Her smile wobbled, but she squeezed back. “We can work on both,” he said firmly, cutting off Gwen's rising panic and the dark rage gathering in Owen's eyes.  
  
“Right.” Tosh let go and stood. “I'm off to get you a new test subject, Owen. I'm thinking something small.”  
  
“Oi! You're the last person that should go traipsing about after those deadly clockwork wankers!”  
  
“Actually, I'm the perfect person for the job. I can't get infected again, can I?”  
  
Tosh won, as she always did once she'd firmly made up her mind about something. Once she'd gathered up her equipment and left, Gwen headed to her workstation to try another search of the electronic files with the new data.  
  
Ianto looked at Owen, who rubbed his hands together and said, “And that leaves us to figure out what's in your head.”  
“So how's that supposed to work, exactly?”  
  
“I was sort of hoping you could tell me.”  
  
Ianto touched his skull gingerly. It felt the same as it always had. “Maybe we could just take it out. You know how to do neurosurgery, right?”  
  
“No,” Owen snapped. His voice was harsh, and he looked almost like he wanted to run for the toilet again. “That's too risky. Who knows what it might do if it feels threatened. It could kill you.” He started to pace in short, jerky movements, hands clenching and unclenching by his sides.  
  
“That's how she died, isn't it?” Ianto asked. “Your girlfriend.”  
  
It looked for a minute as though Owen wasn't going to answer. But then he nodded once, sharply. “Fiancée,” he said. “But yes. Now, can we move on to the matter at hand, Dr. Freud, or did you want to ask me about my mother?”  
  
“No, I'm sure she was a lovely woman. But I don't have any other ideas.”  
  
Owen halted and visibly calmed himself. “Hold on, let me think.”  
  
“While you think I'll go make us some more coffee.”  
  
Ianto hung over the espresso machine, the hollow screech of the steam wand creating an insulating bubble of sound that pushed the rest of the world away. Inside of it, everything smelt of coffee and everything made sense. He wished it could last forever.  
But life didn't work like that. He dropped Gwen's coffee off at her desk and found Owen in the autopsy bay, sweeping up the remains of Ianto's last coffee mug. Ianto regarded the shards with regret— that had been one of his favourites. Jack had brought him an absolutely foul-tasting cappuccino in it the first time Ianto had spent the night with him.  
  
Owen dumped the last of it into the bin and took his coffee from Ianto. “It's proven itself willing to communicate. Maybe we should just talk to it.”  
  
Ianto raised an eyebrow. “Simple and elegant. But how do you propose to manage it?”  
  
“It can hear, right? It heard us talking about the archives?”  
  
A horrible image flashed through Ianto's mind, a bizarre pantomime where Owen pranced around in front of him, shouting inane questions into Ianto's face in hopes of being heard by the hitchhiker in his brain. He shuddered. “No, we need a better plan than that.”  
  
Owen frowned and sipped his coffee.  
  
Ianto watched him swallow. “Wait...”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Maybe we can induce another episode. Like before."  
  
Owen looked sceptical. “We've no idea what caused the last one.”  
  
“No, but I have a theory. Right before it happened, I drank my entire mug of coffee.”  
  
“Coffee? That's your idea?”  
  
Ianto shrugged. “It's a stimulant. It changes brain chemistry.”  
  
Owen ran a hand through his hair. “Ah, hell, why not. It's not like we have any other ideas.”  
  
They moved out of the autopsy bay to the couch on Ianto's suggestion. Considering how off-balance he'd been last time, sitting somewhere comfortable seemed like a good idea. Once he was settled he took a deep breath and chugged. A shameful waste of good coffee, that—  
  
He felt the presence wrench consciousness away from him, but this time he was expecting it and he held on with a vicious grasp. He wasn't shunted away into darkness. He had no control over his body, no sensation, but he could see and hear— vaguely, like he was watching a film through dingy glass.  
  
[CRITICAL ERROR]  
  
Owen looked shaken, but he reached out and took the mug from Ianto's numb fingers before it could fall. “Yeah, we got that the first time. What are you?”  
  
[INTERFACE FAILURE]  
  
“What do you mean, interface failure? Is Ianto the interface?”  
  
The presence didn't respond. Ianto couldn't even be sure it was still there. He tried to move, tried to talk, but it was as though he were trying to levitate a pen with the power of his mind. There was just no connection to his body at all. Panic flooded him, all the more intense for having no means of expressing it. What if he were stuck like this? Forever? He was dimly aware of Owen repeating himself, voice sharp.  
  
[INTERFACE FAILURE]  
  
[UNFORESEEN . . . COMPATIBILITY ISSUES]  
  
The voice was no less all-consuming, but it felt slower, almost hesitant, like it was trying to feel its way through an unexpected circumstance. Ianto clung to it, too relieved at that moment about not being stuck alone in the back of his own mind to care that it was an interloper.  
  
[NONSUSTAINABLE SYMBIOSIS]  
  
“Symbiosis? You're an endosymbiont?” Owen leant forward, made a gesture like he wanted to reach out and grab Ianto's shoulder but thought better of it.  
  
[DEATH IMMINENT]  
  
“Why? Are _you_ going to kill him?”  
  
There was another pause. To keep from panicking, Ianto told himself the presence was thinking. If it could think, if it could respond... He decided to try something.  
  
[Can you hear me?] he thought at it. He felt a small shock of surprised recognition, not his. [You can,] he thought. [What do you want?]  
  
Another pause, this one longer. Owen was starting to look frantic, desperate, and Ianto silently urged him not to interfere.  
[HELP]  
  
This time Ianto could sense an emotion attached to the toneless voice.  
  
[HELP ME]  
  
It was afraid.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
“Help me.” The flat, computerized timbre of Ianto’s voice echoed in Owen’s head. The thing inside Ianto was _speaking_. And it sounded desperate. Owen could barely wrap his head around the fact that he’d just held a conversation with the alien thing inside Ianto. Ianto, who was still staring fixedly at a distant point past his shoulder. Could he get out? Was he stuck inside his own body while the alien computer thing talked? Was he okay? Did he have any control at all? Is this what it’d felt like for Katie?  
  
Ianto’s eyes closed and he jerked slightly then opened them again. He seemed far closer to calm than Owen felt.  
  
“What the hell was that?” Owen demanded, barely reigning in the urge to grab Ianto and shake him.  
  
“Owen? Ianto? I found something. Sort of.” Gwen stopped when she got close enough to see the look on Owen's face. "What happened?"  
  
“What did you find?” Ianto asked. Owen glanced at him; the Welshman seemed to be okay. Owen looked at his own hands. He was trembling. He had to get himself under control. He clenched them into fists and looked back up.  
  
Gwen looked uneasily back and forth between them, but answered. “I got a hit with the new search parameters. Reference number two-seventeen: restricted. Just like the file we found referencing Ianto’s condition.”  
  
“Shit,” Owen muttered. It certainly summed up just about everything at the moment.  
  
“Right before Tosh collapsed, she said the only reason she wouldn’t be able to read the file was if it were Torchwood London. But I thought we had access to all their files.”  
  
Owen shook his head. “They shared their low-clearance stuff with us, but they kept a pretty tight lid on anything sensitive. Tosh managed to pull some of their files over, but they had their sensitive files locked with some alien device even Jack hadn’t seen before, and she couldn’t crack it. When the Battle happened” —he glanced at Ianto, looking apologetic— “the whole system toppled so fast Tosh couldn’t get into it. A lot of the records were destroyed for good. Nearly everything physical was destroyed and even the motherboards and hard drives were twisted wrecks when we got there. There was nothing we could restore.”  
  
“So we have nothing on this.”  
  
“Unless Ianto’s read something on both of these conditions, no, not really.”  
  
“What about Torchwood House? Or Two?”  
  
“Torchwood Two is basically a crazy guy with some technology and a sonic blaster. Archie’s good at getting aliens off the street, but he’s no good with computers or information. And Torchwood House only holds the really old archives, the stuff you’ve got to use gloves and wear masks for, and it controls the four main satellites that scan for alien ships. And miss most of them.”  
  
“We really do have nothing,” Ianto conceded.  
  
“We need to wait for Tosh to get back with our specimen.” It was depressing, indeed. With Jack missing, most of the time they seemed to only have half the information. Usually less. It made Owen miss Suzie, who was an all-around genius and delighted in figuring things out far faster than the rest of them could.  
  
“Listen, I’m hungry. I could do with some lunch. You two up for some takeout?”  
  
“Yeah, all right.”  
  
“I’m going to go make sure Rhys is all right and tell him to stay inside. I’ll pick up some Chinese on my way back. Sound good?”  
  
“Sure.” Ianto shrugged. Gwen gathered her bag and coat.  
  
“Hang on!” Owen called. He handed her a mask. “Just in case. Take your gun with you, too. I know it won’t stop them but it’ll at least slow them down a little.”  
  
“Good thinking. Ta, boys.”  
  
“You think she’ll be all right out there?” Ianto asked as they watched the cog door scream itself shut.  
  
“It’s not as if we could stop her if we wanted to. She gets an idea in her head, she won’t let it go.”  
  
Owen rolled back to his desk and kicked his feet up onto it. Ianto set his elbows on his knees and clenched his fingers in his hair, pulling at the clumps, knuckles white.  
  
“I can’t stop shaking.”  
  
Owen chewed the cap of his pen. “I’m not surprised. We’ve been through hell today. You especially.”  
  
“I dunno. I think I’d rather be me than you.” Ianto looked up from between his arms. “Between me and Tosh and everyone—every _thing_ —in Cardiff getting sick…I just have to worry about myself. You have to worry about everybody.”  
  
“Ianto, I’m Torchwood’s only doctor. I _always_ worry about everybody. It’s my job. This one’s just a little more immediate. I have to say, though, you and Tosh one after the other had me freaked out.”  
  
Ianto’s head dropped to his chest. Owen could see his fingers trembling, tearing out strands of hair. His breath was coming out in tiny little pants, his eyes unfocussed as they stared at his knees. He was going into shock. Owen slid his feet off the desk.  
  
“Owen,” Ianto started, his voice soft and nervous, shaking and tiny in a terrified way. “This thing in my head…Does it make me not human anymore?”  
  
Owen thought of an exposed brain, tentacles waving lazily. No, can’t think about that, not now. He pushed it away. Ianto needed support, not a freaked out doctor. He decided this would be a good time to take a leaf out of Gwen’s book.  
  
“I wouldn’t go that far, mate.” He gave a little smile, hopefully more confident than he felt. At Ianto’s sceptical look, he let it fall from his face. “You’ve got that thing inside your head, but you’re still acting like you.”  
  
Ianto stared at him for a moment, then went back to contemplating his knees. The silence wasn’t as awkward as Owen thought it would be. He tapped his pen against his teeth. Ianto sucked in a breath, then another.  
  
“Do you remember Lisa?” he asked in a voice too strained to be conversational. “My–my girlfriend?”  
  
Owen hadn’t thought about her since the team-wide meltdown that had caused the Rift to open. He wasn’t sure what this was about. He hadn’t known much about Lisa, except that she’d tried to kill them all. That grudge had all but faded away, though, now that he had far more to think about.  
  
“Yeah, I remember her. Why?”  
  
“Human 2.0.” Ianto said flatly, and Owen jerked a little. Ianto’s eyes were glazed over and he was staring vaguely in Owen’s direction without looking at anything. “She wanted me to be like her. Upgraded. More machine than person. And now I’ve got a computer in my head, don’t I? And it’s controlling me. Making me…not human.”  
  
Owen gritted his teeth. Best not to think about that. “Ianto, you’re still a human being. People get tumours and calcifications, hydrocephalus, cancer, all sorts of things in their heads and they’re still human. This isn’t really any different.”  
  
Ianto wasn’t paying attention. He was frowning and rubbing his arms. “I’m cold.”  
  
The shock was setting in. “Why don’t we get you a blanket? And some tea. No coffee right now.”  
  
Ianto shook his head jerkily, blinking rapidly, obviously trying to keep himself from drifting off. “A blanket would be good. Thank you.”  
  
Owen nodded. He remembered Tosh conjuring up a couple of blankets when they’d returned from rescuing Gwen from Suzie. They were in the bottom of a steamer trunk sitting by one of the entrances to the lower levels. He pulled one out and returned to Ianto, who had moved to the sofa.  
  
“Here.” He shook the blanket out and draped it over Ianto’s shoulders, making sure he was well wrapped. “I’ll go make you a cuppa.”  
  
Owen leaned against the counter as he waited for the kettle to boil. He was properly worried about all of this, and he felt like he was in far, far over his head. It was down to him to be the strong, stable, clever one, and he couldn’t rightly claim to be any of those things. The kettle beeped. He poured the water and dropped in the teabag, remembering at the last minute that Ianto didn’t like sugar, and went back to his friend.  
  
Ianto took a sip of the tea and spluttered. “This tea is horrible!”  
  
“It’s medicinal! It’s supposed to help you. Vitamins and stuff.”  
  
“It’s awful.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
A moment later and Ianto was taking a sip of a different cup of tea. He wrinkled his nose. “This is bad too.”  
  
“Bog standard Earl Grey.”  
  
Ianto frowned. “You’re just bad at fixing tea. Remind me again how you live?”  
  
“You make the drinks around here, not me. Drink it anyway.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
Owen sat down again, eyeing Ianto as he grimaced and sipped his tea. He put the cup down on the table, expression solemn. “I’m scared, Owen. I don’t know how we’re going to fix this one.”  
  
“We’ll figure it out. I bet Jack was winging it half the time, too. He’s just better at faking it than us.” He shuddered as a thought came forward. “At least we can talk to whatever this is. I wish I’d been able to do that before.”  
  
Ianto scoffed bitterly. “Jack’s a con man. He’s good at faking everything.”  
  
Owen was still angry. It didn’t matter— there was a niggling thought in the back of his head, the idea that he may have messed things up, that he may have totally deserved it. “Jack’s an arse for leaving us. We deserved it, but he’s still an arse.”  
  
Ianto drained the dregs of his tea and gestured defensively with the empty cup. “He doesn’t owe us anything. He’s a free man.”  
  
“He’s our leader. He knows more about this stuff than we do. He can’t just go swanning off to punish us for getting him killed.”  
  
Inexplicably, Ianto laughed. Owen frowned, resisting the urge to check him for concussion again. “How the hell did we end up here, where shit like this is normal?”  
  
Owen sighed, his thoughts abruptly brought back to damp cemeteries and his dead fiancée’s head open on the operating table. He grimaced and rubbed at the corner of his left eye, a nervous habit. “It’s not like any of us are here of our own free will. Jack makes sure the people he picks are already broken.”  
  
“Owen, what happened to you? How did—”  
  
Owen gave a relieved sigh inwardly as the blaring alarm of the cog door cut off whatever Ianto was going ask him. As weirdly comfortable as he was around Ianto, he didn’t want to talk about that, not now.  
  
“I’m back,” Gwen announced, tugging her mask down.  
  
“Yes, we can see that.”  
  
“Tosh called me. She said she’s on her way back, too.” She sat in her chair. Ianto looked at her with pleading eyes.  
“Gwen? Will you make some decent tea, please? Owen’s rubbish.”  
  
“Sure, sweetheart.” Gwen smiled indulgently.  
  
Owen snickered at Ianto’s flinch at the pet name as he watched Gwen leave. “That’s what you get for calling my tea rubbish.”  
  
“It really is.”  
  
“Thanks, mate.”  
  
Their silence was companionable, the awkward question of moments before mutually ignored. Tosh blew in as Gwen was handing around the tea. She had one of Owen’s containment boxes in her arms. She smiled hollowly at them as she passed.  
  
“Got one.” They followed her to the medbay, where she pulled Owen’s glass terrarium and dumped a small creature about the size of a rat inside. Nearly the entire body was made of metal and gears and wood and glass. The eyes were no longer eyes, but tiny camera lenses that rotated to zoom in and out as the thing looked around.  
  
“What is that?” Owen asked.  
  
“I think it used to be a rat.” She nodded as Gwen joined them at the railing. “Took me a while to find it. But it was really easy to catch. I could…understand it.”  
  
“Like, talk to it?” Gwen asked.  
  
“No. I mean, I could understand its behaviour. I know how it works now, on the inside, so I knew what I needed to do to disable it. It was annoyingly complicated. At least, it would be for all of you.”  
  
“All right. Come on, then, there’s tea while we talk.” They made their way back to the stations and Owen settled himself on his chair. “Now that we’ve got a live specimen, I can run some tests and see what affects it medicinally and physically and all that. Gwen, I suppose you can act as my assistant. While I’m doing that, we really do need to figure out how to stop this ‘death imminent’ thing.”  
  
Ianto’s head came up. “Uh, Owen?”  
  
 _Oh no_ , Owen thought, _please don’t add something else to this mess. Please don’t._ “Yeah?”  
  
“I don’t think the thing in my head is talking about killing _me_.”  
  
“What else could it mean, then?”  
  
“In my head, I could hear it when it talked. I could feel it, sort of. It felt desperate. And scared. I think—I think it’s dying. And I don’t think it wants to die. I think it wants help. The imminent death isn’t mine; it’s whatever’s in my head.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Everyone had seemed relieved by Ianto's announcement. Owen was in the autopsy bay, whistling cheerily as he poked at his clockwork rat, Gwen was on the phone with the police, managing to sound optimistic and reassuring, and Tosh was at her workstation, trying to find data linked to the restricted files and build it into a pattern that might show them the shape of the information they couldn't see directly. She wore the fierce smile she only got when she was going _mano a mano_ with a particularly stubborn technical puzzle.  
  
Ianto wanted to feel relieved, too. It was good news, right? He wasn't going to die. And to get rid of this thing in his head, all he had to do was . . . nothing. He should be ecstatic. But he still felt shaky all over, and fear had left an oily, bitter residue in the back of his throat, and something about the whole situation still just didn't feel _right_. He shied away from analysing why, finished tidying up after lunch and went to make coffee.  
  
Not for him, unfortunately. He looked longingly at the Sulawesi and dropped a bag of Glengettie into his mug. After he'd delivered Gwen and Owen's coffees to them, he set Tosh's down on her desk and leant up against it. He'd drunk a quarter of his tea (and she almost half of her coffee) before she noticed him.  
  
“Sorry.” She gestured at her computer. “I got kind of caught up.”  
  
“Don't worry about it.”  
  
“What do you need?”  
  
Ianto smiled. His own fears were always easier to manage when he could take care of someone else. “I want to know how you're doing.”  
  
Tosh looked a bit startled. “It's going slowly— I just started, but I have found some data. Here, I can pull it up—”  
  
“Tosh, I meant I want to know how _you're_ doing. How are you feeling?”  
  
“Oh.” She flushed slightly and looked away. “Better. The fever seems to have gone, and my head doesn't hurt so much. I think the infection's moved to a secondary phase.”  
  
He nodded and made a mental note to update Owen on the medical aspect. “And how are you coping?”  
  
“It's nothing I can't handle.” Her smile was bright, but she couldn't maintain it.  
  
She tried so hard to show how tough she was, to prove to all of them —and possibly herself— that she never needed coddling or rescuing. But she was probably the most emotionally fragile of any of them.  
  
No, he was wrong. He thought of Owen, of the broken look he had in his eyes even as he raged at the world. Toshiko wasn't as tough as she wanted to be, but she was strong. Stronger than she realised. She’d had her heart broken over and over again, but she healed. Owen, he suspected, was the sort of person who broke once and never really healed.  
  
And Ianto himself? What would it take to break him?  
  
“No, you can't,” he said to Tosh. “None of us can. We're all asked to deal with more than we can handle every day in this job. There's no shame in admitting when it's too much.”  
  
She gave him a look too knowing and too sympathetic to be comfortable. “And you? Is it too much?”  
  
He forced himself to keep breathing evenly through the sudden tightness in his chest. “Maybe,” he said quietly.  
  
She opened her mouth as if to ask him something more, then suddenly went white and folded forward in slow motion with a nearly silent grunt.  
  
“Tosh? Toshiko!” He turned to call for Owen, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.  
  
“I'm fine,” she gasped. “ _Really_ ,” she said when she saw his obvious doubt.  
  
She sounded stronger, so he relented and merely supported her until she could sit upright again. “What's wrong?”  
  
“Just some sharp pains in my torso. They've been coming and going all afternoon. I can only assume it's caused by the conversion of internal organs.”  
  
It crashed over him without warning. The Hub disappeared and he was back in the smoke and terror of London, hearing the deadly clatter of the conversion machines and the screams of their victims. He sucked in a breath, could _feel_ the grit of soot on his tongue.  
  
“Ianto.”  
  
He snapped back to reality to see Tosh's stricken face. He hadn't had a flashback like that in nearly a year. Why did it have to happen in front of someone else?  
  
“Ianto, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have used that word.”  
  
“Not your fault.” He took a deep breath and swallowed the last of his tea. “It's the whole situation. It just brings back bad memories.”  
  
She watched him, face serious. “What's happening to me, it's really nothing like the Cybermen, you know.”  
  
Distance. That was the key. He could get through this if he just concentrated on the immediate, the tangible. How he felt about it didn't matter, it just got in the way. He needed to take all those emotions and lock them away in a back corner of his mind, where they would stop tripping him up and making him fall apart, and he needed to find the appropriate distance again. He'd become very practised at it after Canary Wharf. Things had been too good the last few months, filled with Jack's passion and life. He'd let too many of his barriers fall. But Jack was gone. The rest of the team needed him. If he let himself keep falling apart like this, he wasn't even going to be able to help himself. He smoothed his waistcoat, adjusted his cuffs and focussed on Toshiko.  
  
“What _is_ it like?” He asked quietly.  
  
“It's . . . fascinating. If I could prevent the rest of me from changing, or if I could be sure I'd still be me at the end of it, I think I'd actually be happy about it.”  
  
“You're an amazing woman, Toshiko Sato,” he said. She beamed, and he abruptly realised that that was something Jack would say. The thought made him uncomfortable in a way he didn't want to examine too closely. “Why, though?”  
  
She lit up, the way she always did when she got to explain some new technological marvel to the rest of them. “So the virus has con—has altered my vision, right? Well, it's not actually changed the optic system, it's just modified the way I process the visual input from my eyes. It's not a lot different when I look at ordinary stuff— the walls, or people, or that sofa— but when I look at anything mechanical, I can see how it works. How it's put together. It's like . . . like I can see the schematic as well as the object, underneath or alongside normal vision. It's hard to describe. But when I found that infected rat, I saw it run and knew immediately that if I put a bullet just underneath the bronze plate along its back I would split the belt that moved its back legs. And I could do the same with the gun. I could see exactly what angle and velocity the bullet would be at as it left the barrel, and how much recoil would result. So the shot was easy.  
  
“It doesn't seem to do quite as well with electronics, but it seems to be improving the more work I do on the computer. I've always had an instinct for computers, an ability to kind of read between the lines. Sorry, I don't mean to brag.”  
  
“That's an understatement,” Ianto said, enjoying her enjoyment of the subject.  
  
She blushed but continued. “Anyway, this is almost like that times ten. I'm just noticing more about the way the data links together, and I'm able to see what the results of code I'm writing will be as I'm writing it, ten to twenty steps further out than I normally can. It's amazing.”  
  
“And I just got stuck with a mysterious voice that kicks me out of my own body and has a bizarre liking for coffee,” Ianto said dryly.  
“Speaking of,” Tosh said, and stopped. She bit her lip hesitantly.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Would you be willing to let me talk to it? I've been gone both times it's happened, and I was thinking maybe this new sense of mine might give me some insight.”  
  
He crossed his arms and said, “Not to mention that it's driving you mad that there's a new piece of tech in this place that you haven't been able to interact with yet.”  
  
“Well... All right, fine. Maybe a little.”  
  
The last thing Ianto wanted to do was let that presence take over again. He wanted to forget it was even there, not keep trotting it out like some kind of parlour trick. “Don't you think we should concentrate on the virus? Apparently this parasite, whatever it is, isn't an immediate danger. And the problem might end up solving itself in the end, if it's dying.”  
  
“But that's just it. We don't know for sure, do we? How do you know it's not going to take you with it when it dies? All you have is a few cryptic messages and a feeling. Why would you bet your life on so little?”  
  
Because he didn't want to think about it anymore.  
  
But that was a childish, irresponsible reaction, and Tosh was right. They really didn't know enough to dismiss the problem out of hand, and the thing with Torchwood was that what you didn't know _always_ ended up hurting you. Besides, there was still that feeling of not-right-ness, that sense of unease when he thought about the easy solution of doing nothing. He sighed. “Okay.”  
  


§

  
He made himself a triple espresso whilst Tosh went to get Owen and Gwen. They arranged themselves round the couch where he sat holding his steaming mug and feeling uncomfortably on display.  
  
He couldn't bring himself to chug it. The desperation that had let him fling away his control all in one go last time was gone, and even though he'd committed to doing this he was still reluctant enough that he couldn't seem to stop himself from stalling. So, instead, he sipped. He let the coffee roll over his tongue, dark and complex and bitter, and tried to pretend it was just another cup.  
  
He almost didn't notice the sensation of another personality gathering inside his mind. It was no sudden displacement, this time, just a gradual swelling of the presence. The sense he got from it was one of confusion, as if it were still half-asleep and surprised to find itself peacefully coexisting beside him in his head. It surprised him, too. He took another sip of coffee. [Hello?] he thought at it.  
He felt . . . something, but no voice echoed in his mind and his lips didn't form any words.  
  
“Is anything actually happening?” Owen asked. “Because it's not like I left some very important tests behind in the lab to come watch this or anything.”  
  
Gwen frowned at him. “Shh. Don't distract him.”  
  
Owen rolled his eyes. “I'm pretty sure it's not actually possible to distract Ianto when he's drinking coffee.”  
  
Intrigued now despite himself, Ianto drank the rest a bit faster, not quite chugging it but not lingering, either. The presence grew stronger, but now that Ianto wasn't shoved aside into a back corner of his own mind it didn't just feel like a monolithic invader. It felt . . . familiar.  
  
[Hello?] he tried again. [Can you hear me?]  
  
[ERROR]  
  
His lips didn't move. He frowned. This wasn't going to work very well if the others couldn't hear what it was saying.  
  
[ERROR /HELP / ERROR]  
  
[Why aren't you speaking aloud?]  
  
A pause.  
  
[PERMISSION NOT GRANTED]  
  
Like that had stopped it before? But they were both present in his body at the same time, this time. Just to test it, he lifted his mug and swallowed the last bit of coffee. It was cold and slightly gritty. Finding grounds left in the bottom stung his pride, but he had been in a hurry when he brewed it. [How do I grant permission?] he asked. There was no answer, just a sense of frustration. He couldn't tell if it was his or its.  
  
He thought back to what it had felt like to be shoved aside by the presence and tried to make it happen again, just to a lesser degree. His lips started to tingle, but he was pretty sure that was just because he was _thinking_ at them so hard. Nothing else happened.  
  
[Is that better?] he asked.  
  
[PERMISSION NOT GRANTED]  
  
Ianto gritted his teeth. Well, it was a computer, at least partially. Maybe he was making this harder than it needed to be. [Permission granted] he thought at it.  
  
The silence felt uncertain this time, and then the voice said, hesitantly, [THANK YOU]  
  
Ianto dropped his mug. His skin shivered all over, like it was trying to crawl off his body. This wasn't just a piece of tech in his head, it was something alive. Something alien. Hearing it attempting human pleasantries with his mouth hammered that home in a way Ianto couldn't ignore.  
  
“Okay...” Gwen said. “Why's it saying that? That's a strange message for it to give.”  
  
Ianto wrestled down nausea and tried to keep from violently shoving the interloper out of his mind. Not that he had any real idea of how to do that, or any reason to think it would work. But the need to get it out of his head was so visceral he nearly gagged on the effort of suppressing it. The taste of blood filled his mouth and he realised he'd bitten his tongue. He swallowed. Maybe if he went back to treating it as a computer it would help.  
  
Finally he found enough equilibrium to go on. [Query: identify yourself], he thought at the thing in his brain.  
  
[PROTOTYPE 2L5C.3]  
  
Owen folded his arms and scowled. “It's not making any sense.”  
  
“Maybe it's glitching,” Tosh said with a small frown. “There could be a broken loop, causing it to return random or scrambled data.”  
  
This wasn't working. They needed to be able to hear both sides of the conversation. Ianto licked his lips and spoke aloud whilst still trying to direct the thought at the presence in his mind. A dull ache began to throb behind his eyes from the strain. “Please identify yourself again.”  
  
“Was that Ianto?” Gwen asked.  
  
[PROTOTYPE 2L5C.3]  
  
Tosh's eyes widened. “They're both talking. He's sharing his body somehow, I think.”  
  
Having his mouth bounce back and forth from his control to the thing in his head and back was disconcerting, and the comments from the audience weren't helping. He closed his eyes to shut out some of the distraction. “Clarify,” he commanded.  
  
[AN EXPERIMENTAL DATABASE SYSTEM CREATED BY MERGING SEMISENTIENT MAINFRAME TECHNOLOGY WITH ALIEN LIFEFORM ARTANDEX]  
  
Dread began to congeal in his chest. “Who created you?”  
  
[CREATED BY RONALD F. WALLACE, SENIOR TECHNICIAN, ID NUMBER 2058433]  
  
“When were you created?”  
  
[GENESIS OCCUR-]  
  
[GENESI-]  
  
[ERROR]  
  
“What's wrong?” Gwen asked.  
  
[CRITICAL ERROR]  
  
Ianto felt the alien presence in his mind begin to flicker and fade. “I'm losing it,” he said.  
  
“Go get him more coffee!” Owen snapped.  
  
A moment later someone thrust a hot mug into Ianto's hand. He brought it to his mouth and hastily gulped a few swallows of the contents. The precarious balance in his head stabilised. He didn't know how much longer he could keep this up, and he abandoned his methodical series of questions to ask the one that really mattered: “How did you get in my head?”  
  
[IMPLANTATION OF EMBRYONIC FORM FOR INCUBATION PERFORMED ON SUBJECT 7026593 ON MAY 18, 2005]  
  
The dread spread into certainty, the cold knowledge of something so terrible his mind hadn't yet acknowledged it. It filled his lungs, made it hard to breathe. 7026593 was his employee ID number.  
  
“Who did Wallace work for?”  
  
[TORCHWOOD]  
  
“Oh, my God,” Gwen said.  
  
Ianto forced himself to ask the next question, squeezing the words through his throat by force of will. “What is your purpose?”  
  
It felt as if the room was holding its breath. Tosh and Gwen and Owen were completely silent and even the Rift Manipulator ceased its beeping and humming.  
  
[WE ARE THE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE]


	3. Part 3

Owen had to clamp his teeth together to keep his mouth from falling open. Instead, he let his doctor instincts take over and began to examine the situation, and Ianto, objectively. Ianto seemed to be okay. Fear and surprise were bright in his eyes, but those emotions were mirrored in everyone else’s expressions as well. His face was pale, his hands clenched around the empty coffee mug. They needed to figure out what the thing—the Archive wanted, why it was talking now. He stood up.  
  
Ianto blinked, and suddenly the blankness was gone from his eyes. Owen turned to the girls.  
  
“Tosh, I want you to go through all of our files and find what you can on Torchwood One’s archives and their archiving system. Gwen, I suppose you should call Archie or whoever’s over at Torchwood House and ask them if they’ve ever encountered anything like this. If they ask where Jack is, derail. We don’t want to let on that we’re on our own here.”  
  
“But what about—?” Gwen gestured wordlessly at Ianto, still trying to comprehend. Tosh had a look on her face like she wanted to open up Ianto’s skull and poke around at the computer inside, and Owen felt a bizarre need to protect Ianto.  
  
“It’s okay. We’ll deal with it.” He turned, beckoned Ianto, and strode out of the station area towards Jack’s office. Ianto followed. Turning, he pointed at the mug in Ianto’s hand.  
  
“Alright, go make three of those.”  
  
“What, are you going to make me chug all of them?”  
  
“No, one for me because I’m hopelessly addicted and watching you drink the stuff has made me want more. And two for you. I know it sucks having an audience. I want to talk to the archive one on one and figure out what it wants.”  
  
“Help. It wants help.”  
  
“Yeah, I know that. But we don’t know why. And we don’t know how to help it. I’m a doctor; it’s my job to help things that need it. And maybe helping it will fix you. So hop to it!”  
  
Ianto rolled his eyes and retreated to the kitchen area. The smell of coffee rose and swirled and Owen’s curiosity reared its odd little head. What kind of creature —other than the team itself— was fuelled by coffee? Was that a design by Torchwood, or an evolutionary tactic by the archive itself? Ianto drank coffee all the time, why didn’t it show itself before? What the hell was going on?  
  
Ianto returned with a tray of coffee and followed Owen down to the medical bay. Owen gestured to his computer chair.  
  
“Not the table?” Ianto asked.  
  
“It’s uncomfortable. I mean, unless you really want to…”  
  
“No, no, it’s okay. Just, where are you going to sit?”  
  
“I’ll stand. Seriously, I can stand for hours at a time.” He took a drink of his coffee and looked pointedly at the mugs on the table near Ianto’s elbow. “Now drink.”  
  
Ianto did. It was mesmerizing to watch the slow change as he sipped the coffee. At first he was completely present, face wary, grip solid. Then his face began to slacken into a blank inexpressive slate, his eyes lost their presence as something new and logical came forward, his grip on the coffee mug loosened so that Owen had to catch it to keep it from falling and place it on the table.  
  
Owen crouched and peered up into Ianto’s face. “Ianto? You still there?”  
  
Ianto’s throat worked. “Yes.” The reply was slow to come and unsteady.  
  
“Can the archive hear me?”  
  
Ianto’s eyes seemed to flicker. “YES.” The voice was different from Ianto’s, lacking an accent or any proper inflection.  
  
“You are the Torchwood One Archive?”  
  
“INCORRECT. WE ARE THE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE.”  
  
“We? You mean Ianto and you?”  
  
“YES. WE ARE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE.”  
  
Owen let the confirmation settle in his head. Torchwood One had put an archive of biotechnology into the head of at least one of their employees. He already knew Torchwood had been experimenting with the limits of cyborg technology, but the fact that they’d gone so far as to use their own employees as substitute motherboards was shocking in a rather dark way.  
  
“You said you’re dying. What are you dying of?”  
  
“ERROR: QUERY UNCLEAR.”  
  
So it thought logically; it really was closer to a computer. “What is causing your death?”  
  
“BIOLOGICAL INCOMPATIBILITY. SYMBIONT CHEMICAL BALANCE IS INSUFFICIENT.”  
  
“The chemicals in his body—no, his brain—are at levels that are damaging to you.”  
  
“CORRECT.”  
  
“I’m sorry, but we can’t go changing the chemicals in his body for you to live. It might kill him.”  
  
“INCORRECT. BIOLOGICAL CHEMICALS ARE IN CONSTANT FLUX. PRODUCTION OF CHEMICAL LEVELS NEEDED POSSIBLE. APPROXIMATE LEVELS HAVE BEEN REACHED BEFORE.”  
  
“You work when he drinks coffee. What chemicals cause you to function?”  
  
“COMPOUND C8H10N4O2 AND COMPOUND C7H8N4O2.”  
  
“I’m sorry. You’re going to have to restate that in colloquial English.”  
  
“CHEMICALS CAFFEINE AND PARAXANTHINE.”  
  
“And you don’t acquire enough even with all the coffee he drinks? Wow.”  
  
“NO.”  
  
“That—that was a rhetorical question.”  
  
“You can’t be sarcastic with it, Owen.” Ianto’s strained voice mumbled. “It’s a computer.”  
  
“You can’t just have him drink coffee all the time?”  
  
“ERROR. CRITICAL ERROR.” Owen shoved the second mug of coffee into Ianto’s hand. Ianto drank it automatically. “INTAKE OF SUBSTANCE: COFFEE INSUFFICIENT. INTAKE INTERMITTENT. EFFECTS TEMPORARY.”  
  
“So you need the chemicals that coffee provides in stronger doses.”  
  
“INCORRECT. CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS SATISFACTORY BUT NOT COMPLETE.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“COMPOUNDS NEEDED FOR FULL FUNCTIONING ARE NON-NATIVE TO PLANET EARTH. SUBSTANCE: COFFEE CONTAINS CLOSEST APPROXIMATION.”  
  
“So we have to find those chemicals, or a supply of them?”  
  
“CORRECT.”  
  
“I’m losing it again,” Ianto said, sounding almost relieved. He shook his head, blinking. Ianto alone was present again; the blank stare of the archive was gone.  
  
“Let me get you another coffee,” Owen said, starting toward the stairs.  
  
“No.”  
  
Owen turned back, frowning. “But we still don’t know what the chemicals that it needs are. Or why it’s failing. Or how to help it properly.”  
  
Ianto’s jaw set mulishly. “It can wait.”  
  
“Yeah, alright. We’ve been pushing you a bit hard, haven’t we? But you’ve figured out the balance, yeah? Why don’t you just keep sipping coffee, and we can ask the archive for more information as we need it.”  
  
Ianto shook his head. “No. Just—let it sleep for now.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“I need a break, Owen. I need a chance to think about everything. And I need to be alone in my own head to do it.”  
  
“Okay. Alright.”  
  
Ianto sighed, dropping his head into his hand for a moment before jerking away again like he’d been burned. “Bloody Torchwood. You know, I thought I understood how fucked up working for this place was—how bad it could mess you up, the unreasonable expectations they put on you, the madness—but this?” He gestured at his head again, looking pained. “I can’t believe they did this to me.”  
  
Owen leaned against the wall. “Well, London was known to be the one that did all the creepy experiments and okayed the bad ideas. I mean, look what happened.”  
  
“London was bad, but really, do you think it's all that different here? If he felt it was necessary, do you think Jack wouldn't sacrifice any one of us?"  
  
Owen scratched at his forehead, moving back into the medbay and pulling the little stool towards him. It was difficult to articulate what he felt about Jack; he barely understood it himself. But Jack had saved him, and Jack was—had been— the most stable thing he’d had in his life for a long time, Jack was the kind of person he wished he could be.  
  
“Jack…he fixes the broken ones. I mean, Tosh, when she first got here, she was a nervous wreck. They had her locked in isolation in UNIT for god knows what and Jack got her out of there. She was freaked out and lost and couldn’t do anything without practically breaking down. And Torchwood made her feel useful and made her think about other things and made her better.  
  
“He takes the people who are useless and dysfunctional beyond belief out there in the real world and makes them useful. And it’s better than, you know, dying in a cell or suicide. I don’t think he’d fuck that up by sacrificing one of us in front of everyone else.”  
  
Owen looked up to see Ianto scrutinizing him. He felt weirdly exposed for some reason, despite the fact that he’d essentially said nothing new. Ianto’s expression narrowed, then relaxed. “You really respect Jack, don’t you?”  
  
His chest felt tight. All of this boiling over at once was too much and he’d never been all that successful when it came to self-preservation. “Well, he recruited me, what do you expect?”  
  
“Anyone with half a brain would’ve recruited you. You’re a medical genius.”  
  
Owen scoffed. Ianto had to know how many people they’d failed to save. How many people _he’d_ failed to save. “Yeah, a genius, all right. ‘Cause half the time I deal with patients who are already dead, and the other half of the time they’re on their way there. Or we’re going to have to make ‘em dead by the end of the day. Living people, I’m not so much of a genius. Can’t even keep them alive most of the time.”  
  
Ianto frowned at him again, expression somewhere between analytical and gentle. “What happened to you, Owen? How did you get involved with Torchwood?”  
  
Owen’s stomach clenched. It always hurt to talk about Katie. He had never gotten over her death, even when he fell in love with Diane. Hell, he hadn’t spoken of her to anyone in years. But Ianto would understand; he knew exactly what it was like to lose a lover because of Torchwood. Still, it felt awkward to pull the cover off of that particular hurt and let it see the light of day. A ragged breath in, and he was still stilted and skewed when he began talking.  
  
“Katie. She was my fiancée. She started having, I dunno, memory lapses suddenly. We thought it was Alzheimer’s even though she was only twenty-four. I couldn’t believe it. I made them do more tests, and they found a tumour. Turns out it was an alien in her brain. It killed her when they tried to do surgery. Jack was there but-but he didn’t save her. He made it look like I was mad. Then he hired me a month later.”  
  
Ianto’s face softened, and for a moment it looked like he was going to pity him, and Owen was ready to go on the defensive. Then the archivist’s expression turned to realization.  
  
“Oh, hell. So when you saw this thing in my head…”  
  
“Yeah.” Owen looked at his hands, plucking at the weave of his jeans.  
  
“But if Jack…framed you, made everyone think you were mad, why did you decide to work for him?”  
  
“Well, I didn’t have anywhere else to go, did I? Anyway, I punched him in the face a couple times and then he convinced me to come work for him. Said I could save more lives working for Torchwood than I could working for the NHS. Not all that accurate, but hell, I was too fucked up to care.”  
  
Ianto sighed and raised an eyebrow in his ever-present sarcastic manner. “Well, he does seem to inspire poor decisions. And punching.”  
  
Owen thought back to all the shitty decisions he’d made with Torchwood, all the times he’d punched Jack. They amounted to quite a lot. But the sound of gunshots still rung in his ears and he ran a hand across his face. “Or more than punching. Man, I fucked up, didn’t I?”  
  
Ianto blinked at him, then frowned, looking extremely confused. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, I started it. I got all worked up and I shot him, then I opened the Rift and killed him again. Really, it’s a wonder he didn’t fire me twice. And then he just disappeared. Because of all the shit I did.”  
  
“Owen, we all had a hand in Jack leaving. It wasn’t just you. And,” he added wryly, “I’m pretty sure we all wanted to shoot him at one time or another as well. Hell, now that we know he can’t die, I’m tempted to shoot him myself when he comes back. _If_ he comes back.”  
  
“Well, it’s different now that we know. I thought he was just like any of us…that just makes it worse. I shot him and I thought he was mortal. I thought he’d stay dead and I didn’t bloody care! And now I’m the messed up one. Everyone probably thinks I’m going to freak out and shoot the whole team. You’re probably all scared of me.”  
  
It was strange to be admitting these private things aloud. But now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop. The plug had been pulled and at least he knew Ianto wouldn’t pity him afterward. At least not outwardly.  
  
Ianto’s expression told him that something had fallen into place in the Welshman’s mind, like he’d finally figured something out. He wanted it to hurt, he wanted that to make him angry, but he simply felt mildly intrigued as to how his rambling had changed Ianto’s perception of him. The archivist leaned forward, face solemn.  
  
“You’ve been blaming yourself this whole time, haven’t you? You’re not a monster. That demon screwed with all our heads. That’s what demons _do_. We’re not scared of you, Owen, and we don’t hate you.”  
  
Ianto’s proclamation actually made Owen feel a little better. Because really, what could be better than being left by your lover and your leader, with no leads on a case that’s killing your coworker, and you learn that your colleagues _don’t_ actually hate you?  
  
He chuckled darkly, staring at his hands twisted and pale in his lap. “Shit. You know you’re pathetic when the best thing that can be said for your life is that your coworkers don’t hate you and probably aren’t going to try and kill you. This sucks.”  
  
Ianto put a hand on Owen’s arm, looking up into his face. “This is going to sound horribly cheesy, but it’s true. We’re not just your coworkers. We’re your friends. I’m your friend. I thought you knew that.”  
  
“You’re right. It is horribly cheesy. Though I doubt you could come up with anything better on your own.”  
  
“Well, you are an _intolerable_ wanker, but I like you anyway.”  
  
“Thanks,” Owen mumbled, really meaning it this time. They paused there for a moment, a vignette of friendship and odd, dark camaraderie. Then Ianto stood quickly and cleared his throat, jerking Owen from his daze.  
  
“Listen, I want to go think this over.”  
  
“Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, go do that.” With a nod, Ianto departed for the archives and Owen was left staring after him, his thoughts swirling around in his head.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Just being in the cool silence of the archives made everything feel a little less overwhelming. Ianto breathed in the smells of dust and damp stone and picked a random direction. The neatly labelled and cross-referenced shelves of the stacks marched in even rows on either side of him. The chaos of the universe collated and arranged into patterns. Into something that made sense. If only he could do the same with his life.  
  
Well, he had a name, at least. Artandex. The species that the creature in his head was built from. Surely he'd read something about it at some point. He tried to call up a memory of it, but got nothing. Not even any related data. The drip of water in a distant tunnel and the hum of the mainframe echoed round him, and his mind felt just as hollow, just as empty.  
He stopped abruptly as he realised what he was doing. The room seemed to sway in his vision, on the verge of spinning, as if he were about to faint. He sat down instead, the cement floor jarring his spine.  
  
He'd always had an eidetic memory. Even as a kid, once he'd seen or heard or read something he could remember it forever, as clear in his mind as if it were right in front of him. But these last few years, since he'd taken over the archives at Torchwood Three, he'd been able to remember things he could swear he'd never run across before. And even when he couldn't remember the exact thing he was looking for, his mind would fill with a thousand related bits of information.  
  
It wasn't supposed to work like that. It had started so gradually, and he'd been so messed up after Canary Wharf and Lisa, that he hadn't noticed the change. But it wasn't him remembering that data, was it? It had never been him. It was the thing in his head.  
  
‘WE ARE THE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE’, it had said.  
  
What else had it changed about him? His love for coffee — was that because of it, too? He'd been a typical, tea-loving Welsh boy before Torchwood. He'd put the shift down to exposure —everyone at Torchwood drank coffee by the litre— and maturing tastes, but this _thing_ required it, didn't it? What about his intelligence? It would be a poorly designed implant, he thought bitterly, if it didn't have extra processing capability built in to augment analysis of the expanded data. How much of him was him, and how much was this alien inside him?  
  
He put his forehead down against his knees and tried to hold himself together. He still couldn't comprehend that they'd done this to him, implanted some experimental alien-computer hybrid in his brain without his permission or even knowledge. They must have done it his second year with Torchwood London, when he'd been in hospital having that emergency adenoidectomy. He knew they'd had access to the hospitals.  
  
Betrayal sat in his stomach like a bitter seed he'd swallowed, only a thin husk of denial preventing it from sprouting creeping tendrils of rage to perforate his organs.  
  
He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how he could ever accept this. How could he, when he was left not even knowing who he was?  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen wandered around his medbay, generally tidying up and moving things about. It wasn’t something he would normally do, but he had nothing to autopsy and he was still lost in thought. Part of him was still hitting himself over the head with guilt about Jack’s disappearance and Katie’s death, while the other part was trying to get his attention to focus on the case. It resulted in a rather weird jumble of half-formed and not at all articulated thoughts slip-sliding through his head.

It was difficult to separate the loss of Katie and, really, the loss of Jack, from the impending threat of losing Tosh and possibly Ianto. It was why he’d joined Torchwood in the first place, why he’d come up with the spiky, acerbic demeanour. He’d never been good at self-preservation in some of the more crucial moments, but if he could shield himself from the little hurts, or keep people from getting too close, he might have the chance of not getting hurt when someone left. A thud sounded from the main hub, the familiar sound of a body hitting concrete. He bolted out of the bay towards the computer stations. Tosh was curled in the foetal position on the floor, a hand over her chest, panting shallowly. Her face was ashen, sweat beaded on her forehead.  
  
“Tosh? Gwen!” Gwen appeared a moment later. “Bekaran scanner! Now!”  
  
The tech was tossed to him, followed by Gwen as she dropped to her knees on Tosh’s other side. “What’s going on?”  
  
“I don’t know. She just keeled over. Scanning now.”  
  
The scanner beeped over Tosh, lights flashing. Owen’s eyes widened as he stared at the image on the screen.  
  
“Owen?” Ianto had heard the commotion and come up from the archives. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Her internal organs have all been converted. Her heart’s changing now. The mechanics of the Weevil’s machine-heart was much different from the mechanics of a human heart.”  
  
“Will it kill her?”  
  
“I don’t know.”

* * *

  
  
Ianto fought down the panic clawing its way up the back of his throat. His fit of anguish down in the archives felt stupid now, immature and self-indulgent. Tosh could be dying right in front of them. “What do you need me to do?”  
  
“Help me move her.” Owen ordered.  
  
It only took the two of them to carry her into the autopsy bay. Gwen ran ahead to make sure everything was ready. As soon as they slid her onto the table, Owen turned away to pull out the portable defibrillator.  
  
“CPR!” he barked over his shoulder.  
  
Ianto folded his hands over the centre of Toshiko's chest and began to pump. Her ribs felt strange under his palm in a way he couldn't define. Gwen bent over to blow air into Tosh's lungs.  
  
Owen came up beside him and clipped something onto Tosh's hand. The steady, ominous tone of a flatlined heart rate monitor filled the room.  
  
“Clear!” Owen yelled.  
  
Ianto fell back. Owen slammed the pedals down. Tosh arched violently as the current surged through her.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
“No pulse,” Owen announced, gesturing for the two to continue CPR as he charged the defibrillator again. Losing Tosh was not on his list of priorities for the day. He’d do anything he could to save her. He placed the paddles against Tosh’s chest again. “Clear!”  
  
Tosh’s body seized again, but this time the thud of her back hitting the table was accompanied by Ianto’s sigh of relief. “Pulse is back.”  
  
Owen glanced at the screen that monitored Tosh’s heart rate. It was all over the place. “It’s too irregular. If it doesn’t stabilize, she’s not going to make it.”  
  
“Her pulse is still dropping, Owen!” Ianto’s voice was frantic once more as he checked the monitor clipped to her hand.  
  
“Oxygenation’s at eighty percent and going down,” Gwen informed him. Her voice was the flat tone of someone trying to keep as detached as possible in an insane situation.  
  
The defibrillator did nothing as Tosh arched again. Owen’s brain scrambled for another possibility as he watched the numbers plummet on the screens around him. The technician was limp on the table, her chest no longer heaving with the struggle to breathe, and he watched as the beeping slowed, the numbers sliding down to the single digits, and stopped. A silence filled the room, punctuated only by the unending whine of the flatline.  
  
Owen jumped into action, the only movement in the room as the other two stood in shock. Opening a cabinet, he grabbed a laryngoscope and tracheal tube.  
  
“Gwen!” he barked, “Hold this. Give it to me when I say so.”  
  
She approached, taking the tube from him. He stepped behind Tosh’s head, pressing her lower jaw open with his left thumb and keeping her lips back with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. Then he moved his hand so that his thumb and index finger were keeping her mouth open, using his left hand to slide the laryngoscope in and keep her tongue out of the way.  
  
“Gwen.” She handed him the tube, and he slid it down her throat and into her trachea with practised ease. It was something A&E doctors never forgot how to do. He attached the tube to a breathing circuit and handed the bag off to Gwen, who began pumping.  
  
Owen charged the paddles once more. “Clear.” Tosh tensed off the table as the electricity surged through her and thudded back down. The whine of the monitor did not change.  
  
“Ianto!” The Welshman came over and Owen shoved the paddles into his hands. “Standby with the defib.” He rushed to the cabinet again, pulling out a large syringe.  
  
“Epipen?” Gwen asked, confused.  
  
“Yeah. Move.” She shifted to the side, biting her lip as Owen uncapped the needle and stabbed it into Tosh’s chest, pressing the plunger.  
  
Tosh’s body jerked, and simultaneously, the monitor began beeping again. She coughed around the tracheal tube, eyes still closed.  
  
“She’s still unconscious, Owen.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah. She’s all right, though. She’s trying to breathe on her own. That’s good. You can stop that now,” he indicated Gwen still pressing the inflated bag. “Ianto, get the oxygen and mask, will you?”  
  
Owen slid the tube out of Tosh’s throat, handing it off to Ianto, who gave him the oxygen mask in trade. The Welshman placed the tube in the sink. Owen fitted the mask around Tosh’s nose and mouth. The heart monitor beeped steadily.  
  
“Jesus christ.” Owen’s legs felt wobbly. He braced himself on the table to keep from falling over. He hadn’t had an emergency that had scared him that much since his first years working for A&E.  
  
“Yeah,” Ianto agreed. Gwen nodded. Owen was still shaking. He’d gone into doctor mode, shoving the shock and terror away in order to keep working, keep moving, and now that it was all over, his brain was sliding away from him.  
  
“Keep–keep an eye on her.” He stumbled up the stairs and into the bathroom. Turning on the tap, he splashed cold water on his face, trying to stave off the shakes that were threatening to overtake him. He couldn’t even save his own teammate without freaking out. What did that say about his ability to save all the others? And what about Ianto? Hell, he still had no idea what was going on with anybody. This was completely mad.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Ianto couldn't look away from Tosh's face. They'd come so close to losing her, and it felt like if he looked away for even a moment she might slip away. His pulse was thumping a syncopated counterpoint to hers, two or three beats for every beep from the monitor.  
  
Gwen slid the stool over next to the table and collapsed onto it. “That was close,” she said.  
  
Ianto nodded.  
  
“She's going to be okay now. We got her through it.”  
  
“I should've been paying attention,” Ianto said. “We all knew she was sick. I let myself get distracted by my own problems when I should have been noticing hers.”  
  
Gwen hesitated, smoothing Toshiko's hair. Finally, she shook her head. “It doesn't matter. We—”  
  
The heart monitor shrieked a sudden alarm. Tosh spasmed brutally and arched as if she were being shocked by the defibrillator again. Ianto threw himself forward, onto her, trying to keep her from bucking off the table.  
  
“What the hell's going on in here?” Owen shouted as he ran in.  
  
“I don't know!” Gwen said. “She was fine, and then everything just went crazy!”  
  
Ianto didn't have room to pay attention to anything except holding on. The small body that thrashed under his was uncannily powerful, well beyond the wiry strength Tosh normally possessed. A flailing arm caught him across the cheek and knocked him off onto the floor.  
  
“Get out of my way!’ Owen snapped.  
  
Ianto scrambled to the side and onto his feet. Owen grabbed the defibrillator paddles, rubbed them briskly together and slapped them onto Tosh during a split second in which she stopped moving.  
  
Nothing happened. Her muscles didn't even tighten— at least, no more than they already were.  
  
“Did one of you turn this off? Hold her still, damn you!”  
  
Ianto lunged. He kept his feet on the floor this time and tried to control her arms. One of her legs lashed out and caught the edge of the cart that held the heart monitor and defibrillator. It skidded away across the tiled floor, yanking the paddles out of Owen's hands and pulling the sensor off Tosh's finger. The alarm cut out and Tosh's breathing sounded loud in the sudden silence.  
  
Owen had stopped moving. Ianto looked at him, still wrestling with Tosh's upper body, and saw him staring at Tosh's leg. A new dose of panic jolted through him. “What?”  
  
Owen's only response was a quiet, “Shit.”  
  
“What is it? Owen?”  
  
“This isn't blood. She's bleeding, but this...” He held up a hand, palm and fingers glistening black. “I think it's oil.”  
  
Tosh sucked in a breath, harsh and juddering, and froze. Ianto let go in surprise. She shuddered all over, then the breath whooshed out of her and she collapsed limply onto the table.  
  
Seeming to shake himself out of his daze, Owen grabbed her wrist. “She has a pulse!” he announced. “Wait.”  
  
Caught between relief and dread, Ianto could only watch him.  
  
“That's... That can't be right. Gwen– thank you,” he said when he saw she was already pushing the cart back over to him. He found the sensor and clipped it back on her finger.  
  
The steady, reassuring pulse of a heartbeat sounded almost immediately. Putting a hand down on the edge of the table to steady himself, Ianto let out the breath he'd been holding. Then he heard it. The thing that was bothering Owen. The rhythm was... wrong. Too fast, for one, though it hadn't seemed odd at first considering how fiercely Ianto's own heart was pounding. And too even. You couldn't hear the comforting bumBUM, bumBUM of a normal heartbeat through a monitor, but now even the sense of it was missing. He found Tosh's wrist, fingers slipping in the greasy liquid Owen's fingers had left behind. Her pulse was easy to find, strong and steady. Mechanical. Even skin against skin, it reminded him of nothing so much as the steady ticking of a wind-up toy.  
  
“Oh my God,” Gwen said.  
  
“I know,’ Owen said.  
  
“No. What's happening to her _face_?”  
  
Almost against his will, Ianto looked. What he saw made him wish he could turn off his perfect recall— though he suspected that even if he had a normal, fallible memory that image would haunt him forever. It looked like the skin on the left side of her face was melting. What it exposed wasn't bone, but rather a brass skull. He could see the jut of her cheekbone, the large gear that replaced her temporomandibular joint, the even steel knobs of her teeth. A thin sheet of copper grew out from her left ear, covering her cheek, and several articulated plates clicked out from its lower edge, attaching to the bronze that now covered her jaw. The skin that covered the left side of her forehead seemed to wither and age, darkening to deep brown. Leather. It covered her eye socket but, as he watched, a hole appeared in the centre of it and dilated like a camera lens. As it opened, her right eye fluttered and opened as well.  
  
“What—” Her voice was hoarse, uneven, but it still sounded like her. “What happened? My mouth feels strange.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Panic and self-hatred and terror and a horrible doubt of his own capabilities were battling for dominance, roiling Owen’s stomach. The sight of Tosh’s face now distorted and replaced by an approximation of angles and gears and metal bits terrified him. He had _watched_ her change and he hadn’t been able to do a thing to stop it.  
  
He could feel the meltdown in process, the tension riding its way from the top of his head all the way down his body, the tell-tale prickle at the back of his eyes. He cleared his throat.  
  
“Gwen, why don’t you get Tosh a cup of tea and let her know what’s just occurred?”  
  
“Alright,” Gwen agreed, helping Tosh off the table. “Come on, Tosh.”  
  
Tosh hobbled up the stairs with Gwen at her elbow. Tosh was looking resolutely forward but all of them had to look at her, couldn’t bear to look at her, couldn’t stand the fear. Owen waited until they were well out of earshot before sinking into a chair, tugging at his hair.  
  
“I can’t do this. This is fucking mad. I’m not a good enough doctor for this stuff. I spend most of my time here killing things or looking at dead things. I’m no good at keeping the living alive. And I have no idea what’s going on. I’m useless.”  
  
He felt Ianto shift beside him. “Owen—”  
  
“No, seriously, mate, I don’t get it. Why are all of you depending on me? I haven’t got a clue what the fuck I’m doing, and when I do figure it out, I’m shit at it anyway. You should be relying on someone, but that sure as hell shouldn’t be me.” Owen kicked the leg of the table. “I didn’t have a clue what to do back there. And now Tosh is…like that, and we have no idea what happens when it gets worse. And then there’s you… I’m rubbish. I won’t be able to save anyone.”  
  
He ran both hands down his face in attempt to calm himself. It didn’t work. The words were still spilling out at an alarming rate and he had the feeling he’d regret this meltdown later, but it certainly wasn’t going stop now.  
  
“You and Tosh are best friends, you’re shagging Jack, even you and Gwen have a laugh. Me, I’m just here by m’self. And you lot are clever. You and Tosh figure things out or know things in an instant, Gwen goes off and investigates things and talks to people, and Jack is just fucking omniscient. I let the computer do the work, and when I actually have to do things, well, you saw what happened.  
  
“Everyone else is so bloody good at compartmentalizing and thinking things through and knowing when shit doesn’t matter and I just go mad. That machine that we found when Gwen first got here? The one with the two halves? After I saw…what I saw, I couldn’t think of anything else. It was decades old and I couldn’t do a thing about it but I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I went out of my head and just…you know. Felt like shit after, but that’s how it works with me. You all can control yourselves, your reactions, the way you handle the shit you see. I just can’t and then I fuck everything up.”  
  
Owen wasn’t even going to mention his enormous reaction to Diane’s departure or the out of control drinking sprees he’d gone on after Ianto’s cyber-girlfriend had destroyed the place and when they’d gotten home from Brynblaidd.  
  
“My life is just a sodding mess.” He muttered. “I’m incapable of helping any of you. Really, you should find someone more competent. Jack was right for firing me. I would have done.”  
  
The image of Jack’s solemn face as he forgave him came to his mind and he felt guilt and self-loathing clench his gut and claw at his chest. He hadn’t deserved forgiveness, not for opening the Rift, not for killing Jack, not for so royally fucking things up.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
“Oh, stop bloody whinging already,” Ianto snapped. He was still feeling sick and shaky from Tosh's crisis, and Owen was losing it completely, standing there feeling sorry for himself and about to give up, and suddenly Ianto just couldn't take it anymore.  
  
Owen's head whipped round. “Oi!”  
  
Ianto spoke right over the top of him. He was furious— at Owen, at himself, at Torchwood, at the whole damned mess. “This isn't about you, Owen. You think you're the only one who's scared? You think you're the only one who doesn't know what to do?”  
  
“You don't understand—”  
  
“No, I think I do.” His hands curved into fists and he turned away abruptly and stalked across the room. “You want to give up. It's all gotten to be too much for poor little Owen and you want to run away and go lick your wounds.”  
  
Owen glared. “I'm no coward,” he snarled.  
  
“You bloody well sound like one!” Ianto shouted. “Well, guess what? You don't get to quit, none of us do. You have responsibilities here— Tosh almost _died_. And she's sitting out there right now, drinking tea through a mouth that’s half made of metal.”  
  
“I _know_ that!”  
  
“You think _she_ doesn't want to go home and have a nice dinner and not have to worry about Torchwood? Instead she's here, working on saving everybody else's arses when we don't even know if she'll be human by morning!”  
  
“I can't fix her!”  
  
“So what? That's no excuse to give up on her!” Owen had gone dead white, his eyes like black holes in his face. Something dark twisted in Ianto's gut, guilt or pity or fear, but he couldn't stop. He wasn't even sure that he was yelling at Owen, now, or if Owen just happened to be a convenient target. “You selfish bastard. You shouldn't even be thinking about your own pathetic little problems! They don't matter. Deal with your crap on your own time, but the team comes first. You forget that and you really are a worthless piece of shit!”  
  
With an incoherent sound of rage, Owen charged. He knocked Ianto to the floor with one shoulder, landing on top of him. Ianto got an elbow up. The shoulder seam of his suit jacket ripped. Owen's hand clamped round his throat and Ianto lashed up with one knee. It met the taut line of muscle instead of the soft testicles he'd been aiming for. A fist slammed into his cheek and pain exploded across his face. Damn, it felt good. Another fist struck his ribs. He bucked up, hit Owen in the nose with his forehead.  
  
Owen howled and rolled off of him, and Ianto followed, catching him under the jaw with a right hook. He could taste blood, sweet and metallic, and realised he was grinning madly. Owen wrapped his arms around Ianto's shoulders, pinning his arms down where he couldn't use them. Someone's foot caught the crash cart and spun it across the room to slam into the exam table. The fight degenerated into a contest of strength as they each struggled to keep the other pinned whilst freeing themselves.  
  
“What the _hell_?” Gwen's voice, floating down from the doorway, sounded livid.  
  
Owen let his head fall back against the floor and Ianto stopped trying to choke him.  
  
“It's nothing,” Owen said wearily.  
  
“You're trying to kill each other!”  
  
Ianto let himself collapse boneless across Owen's chest. “We're fine, Gwen,” he called.  
  
She still sounded angry. “I can't _believe_ you two thought this was an appropriate time for this kind of behaviour.”  
  
Owen chuckled, bouncing Ianto's head up and down. “You wouldn't understand, sweetheart,” he said.  
  
“ _Men_ ,” Gwen huffed, but she left.  
  
Owen craned his neck to look down at Ianto, smirking. “Are you _hard_?”  
  
He was, actually. It had been too long since he'd been wrapped round another body, and adrenaline from the fight still zinged along his nerves. He groaned and rolled off of Owen onto his back.  
  
“You're fucked up,” Owen said, conversationally.  
  
Ianto smiled wryly at the ceiling. “I can't argue with that.”  
  
Owen stood and held out a hand. “Let's go get cleaned up, yeah?”

  


§

  
Ianto's reflection stared back at him mournfully. His cheek was swollen and split, and his face covered in blood— his and Owen's both. His jacket was torn and filthy, his shirt stained with more blood, his tie askew and his hair a complete disaster. At least he kept a spare set of clothes here.  
  
He walked past Owen, who was scrubbing his face under the tap, and got it. He stripped off his ruined suit and used the back of the shirt, which was still relatively clean, as a flannel to wipe off his face and chest.  
  
“Ouch,” Owen said, poking at his nose. “You fight dirty.”  
  
Ianto smiled. “Rugby.”  
  
“Bloody Welsh.”  
  
“Hey.” Ianto paused, water dripping off his chin, to figure out what, exactly, he should say. “I shouldn't have said that to you.”  
  
Owen snorted. “Which part?”  
  
“All of it. Well, most of it, anyway.”  
  
Owen shrugged, shoulders stiff and jerky. “You were right.”  
  
He was closing himself off again, trying to hide his fear and uncertainty away where the rest of them couldn't see it. Where it would fester. Ianto put a hand on his shoulder and turned him so he could see his face. “I wasn't. I wasn't even talking to you, really.”  
  
“Yeah? You had some pretty damned accurate hits for shooting blind, mate.”  
  
“I wasn't shooting blind. I was aiming at myself.” Owen was looking everywhere but at him. Ianto sighed. “We're all just muddling through, Owen, no matter what it looks like to you. Even Jack. I've heard the nightmares he has when he actually sleeps. Seen him when he's falling apart and doesn't know what to do and is sure he's screwing up.”  
  
“This would be an easier conversation to have if you'd put some clothes on,” Owen said.  
  
“No, it wouldn't.” But Ianto let go of him and pulled his shirt on. “All I'm saying is, you're not doing any worse than any of the rest of us.”  
  
Something crumbled in Owen's face, some last defence or desperate pretence, and he finally met Ianto's eyes. “But I _am_ ,” he said. “I know it's not easy on any of us, I know you all struggle. But I fall apart. I just can't keep doing this.”  
  
Ianto considered as he finished buttoning his shirt. “Maybe you just can't keep doing it the way you have been,” he said as he pulled on clean pants and reached for his trousers.  
  
“What do you mean?” It sounded like Owen wanted to be suspicious, but it just came out sounding tired.  
  
“You push us all away, pretend you're too tough to need any help or even any comfort. None of the rest of us does it alone. Gwen has Rhys, and had you for a while. I have Tosh, and _sometimes_ I think maybe I have Jack. Tosh has me, and Jack goes to this bar sometimes— I don't know who he talks to there, but most of the time he comes back calmer, a little more confident.”  
  
Owen turned back to the basin. “And I have no one.”  
  
“That's where you're wrong.” Ianto crossed his arms and tried to will Owen to believe him. “You have all of us.”  
  
A low, bitter laugh answered him. “Yeah, sure. Gwen hates me, even if she did let me fuck her for a while. Tosh is too in love with the idea of me to even see the real me. Jack would never understand, not really, and you...”  
  
“What about me?”  
  
“Like you have any tolerance for dealing with my shit.” Owen hunched over the basin. “If you can't label it, file it and index it, there's no room for it in your life, is there?”  
  
Ianto fought down a surge of defensive anger. Owen lashed out when he felt vulnerable, Ianto knew that, and letting that push his buttons right now would defeat the purpose of making him have this conversation in the first place. He pulled his tie round his neck and focussed on knotting it until his jaw unclenched. Once he could speak without showing his annoyance, he said, “Look. I know we don't always get along. We're not much alike, and the way we deal with stuff is usually diametrically opposed. But I do understand what Torchwood does to a man, and I will listen.”  
  
Owen sneered, but it was half-hearted. “I don't see how talking about it solves anything.”  
  
“You could always just punch me again.”  
  
That startled an actual laugh out of Owen.  
  
“I do reserve the right to hit you back, though,” Ianto clarified.  
  
“Hell, you'll probably headbutt me again.”  
  
“Only if you're being a complete arse.”  
  
“That would be every time, then.” Owen looked up and met Ianto's eyes in the mirror, and they both snickered.  
  
Ianto took a deep breath. “Finding out today what Torchwood did to me . . . it's really shaken me.” He gestured at his head. “I guess I'd still felt, on some level, that Torchwood was something I could believe in. Something I could rely on to make things better. But it's not. Torchwood chases its own agenda, and we're just tools. Human resources. I've always thought that term was overly calculating, but Torchwood takes it to a whole new level.” He twisted his lips and shook his head. “What I'm saying is, all we have is each other. So I promise you here and now— when you need me, I'll be there. Whether you need somebody to talk to, or get pissed with, or an extra set of hands in the lab or backup on a mission, or hell, a chance to mutually beat someone to a pulp. I will be there for you.”  
  
Owen dropped his eyes and stood silently for a long time. Long enough that Ianto began to worry he'd put his foot in it. Finally, Owen spoke to the wall. “I don't know that I'll be able to trust that. Not right away.”  
  
“Then I guess I'll just have to prove it to you.”  
  
The silence this time was companionable. Ianto wetted and combed his hair, enjoying the still calm that had finally settled on him. The eye of the storm— as soon as they went back out they'd have to deal with Tosh and the virus spreading across the city— but for right now, he'd take the sense of peace for however long it lasted. And there, sitting inside him, was a decision he hadn't realised he'd made.  
  
“I'm going to let this thing in my head die,” he told Owen.  
  
“What?”  
  
“The Archive, or whatever it's calling itself. I'm not going to do anything to save it.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
He nodded. “It's an alien. We're not in the business of rescuing aliens, are we? And it's at least half computer, anyway, it's not like it's really alive. Besides, we need to focus on stopping the virus— on saving Tosh. That's what really matters here. Wasting time on a problem that's going to solve itself could cost us the chance to fix the real crisis. And that would be beyond stupid; it would be criminal.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen finished washing up in companionable silence with Ianto and slipped out of the washroom. Somehow, the fight with Ianto and his later support had lifted something from his chest. The tension he’d been riding in waves was calmer now, the fear and doubt crouched at the bottom of his stomach like a menacing ghoul had shrunk back into itself, and his helpless anger had diminished from spitting flames to simple sparks of annoyance at Jack.  
  
He made his way to the main part of the hub, partly entertaining the idea of apologizing to Gwen. He decided against it. The fight had been between him and Ianto, and Gwen didn’t really come into it.  
  
He approached the bank of computers, rounding the flickering screens to find Tosh seated on the sofa, looking in a mirror with Gwen beside her. The doubt came rushing back, little niggling thoughts whispering to him that he wouldn’t be able to save Tosh, and she’d be like this, _wrong_ , forever. That she’d never forgive him. That he’d never forgive himself. It stopped him just short of the top of the stairs.  
  
Tosh heard his feet scuff the cement and looked up at him. She smiled; it looked odd with one half of her face, but it was genuine. “Owen, this is amazing. The mechanisms that have combined to make my face are incredible!” She giggled. “I fascinate myself!”  
  
Owen approached cautiously, still queasy about looking at Tosh’s mutated face. “Are you sure you’re not drunk on shock?”  
  
“Oh, probably a bit. But, really, this is amazing.” She moved her eyes up and down, obviously captivated by the movement of the camera lens that had replaced her eye. “I know it’s weird, but a part of me is thrilled that I get to have an experience like this. I mean, who else has ever had the chance to _become_ the kind of machines they study?”  
  
“You are very weird,” Gwen commented.  
  
“Comes with the territory.”  
  
Owen frowned. “So…you’re okay with it?”  
  
“Well, I mean, it’s not great. But I can still think, I still have sensation, I still have emotion. I’m just…more computer-y. It’s not all bad.”  
  
Something else released inside Owen and he sighed. The feeling that he’d failed Tosh, that he’d destroyed her was gone, leaving behind only a little bit of weary resignation that he might not cure this no matter how hard he tried. He pushed its sluggish tendrils away and smiled at Tosh.  
  
“Well, girls, I’m glad we had that chat. I’m hungry. Anyone else care for some food? There’s Thai in the fridge that we can reheat.”  
  
“Me!” Tosh raised her hand like a schoolgirl. “Whatever this thing is, it seems to take a lot of energy. I’m starving.”  
  
“Me, too.” Ianto joined them, sitting down beside Tosh, who turned to him with a smile and began speaking excitedly. Owen watched them for a moment, then made his way back to the kitchen area to get the cartons and paper plates for everyone.

§

  
They’d just finished eating, and were discussing anything and everything that was as far away from the current situation as possible, when Tosh’s computers starting buzzing and beeping and making every sort of racket known to man.  
  
“What’s happening?”  
  
Tosh’s fingers flew across the keyboard, accessing maps and scrolling data and matrices and calculations and garbled news reports.  
  
“It looks like the infection has spread to over half the population. Data’s giving me sixty-one percent infection, but it could be more.”  
  
“Shit!” Owen hit the top of the desk. This was out of control.  
  
Gwen looked on worriedly, then her eyes widened and she grabbed her gun off her desk. “I need to go find Rhys!” she shouted. Ianto reached to stop her, but she brushed him off. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got a mask and gloves.”  
  
The cog door screamed open and closed and she was gone. Owen sagged against the table. Now it was _really_ out of control.  
  
“What can we do?” Ianto asked.  
  
“Well, I don’t know how quickly people are being infected, or how fast the infection is spreading and converting each person’s body, so we’re going to have to monitor that before we can figure it out.”  
  
“Alright,” Owen straightened. “Tosh, why don’t you work your computer wizardry and get a program going that will keep that on watch.”  
  
“Already on it.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
Ianto gripped Owen’s arm as he passed. “What if she brings Rhys back here? What are we going to do?”  
  
“We’re gonna scan him for this virus thing. If he’s clear, we make him sit around on the sofa or in the boardroom or something. Just keep him out of our way. If he isn’t…”  
  
“We throw him out on the street?”  
  
“Well, I was going to suggest killing him, but your idea makes Gwen less likely to kill _us_.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
With Gwen gone, they were stretched too thin to get done half of what needed doing. Owen was in his lab, trying to rush the results on the tests he'd been running on the converted rat. Tosh was focussing on analysis of the virus from an epidemiological standpoint, muttering to herself about R-noughts and vectors of transmission. That left Ianto trying to do both his job and Gwen's. He had Sky News up on one monitor as, on another, he attempted to find something —anything— in the archives that would give them some kind of advantage. Every few minutes, the phone would ring as everyone from the local police to the Home Secretary called to find out what was going on and what the hell Torchwood was doing about it.  
  
None of it looked good.  
  
For now, the police were managing to keep things under control, if barely. There had been some looting in Adamsdown and Canton, but that was hardly surprising, and elsewhere in the city things were strained but still relatively calm. That didn't look like it was going to last long. Automatons were everywhere, some of them attacking people or each other, some just standing there, some acting confused or erratic. Almost two thirds of the people on the news footage showed some evidence of infection.  
  
His search of the archives was turning up nothing. The search-and-analyse Tosh had run earlier was still the best they had, and it was so sketchy it didn't tell him much more than he already knew. Whatever connection Torchwood London had had to this virus, they had covered their tracks thoroughly.  
  
He finally wrapped up his conversation with the Downing Street Chief of Staff, which mostly consisted of him saying “Uh-huh” as the man ranted, and repeating the phrases “We're doing everything in our power to handle the situation” and “I'll inform you as soon as we have any news whatsoever, sir” as often as necessary. Damn Jack for running off and leaving them, anyway.  
  
There was just no way he was going to be able to do this without coffee. He'd been avoiding the thought as long as he could, but coffee was his comfort, the thing that steadied him and made him believe that he could manage, no matter how bad the situation was. Just the smell of it made him feel calmer and more in control. The fact that this thing in his head had complicated that —had ruined it— probably pissed him off more than anything else about the situation.  
  
He didn't take the time to do anything complicated, as much as he wanted to. Just a mug of regular brew with a splash of cream. It was enough. He started sipping it as he walked back to his workstation. Slowly— he couldn't afford to let the interloper take control of his brain. It tasted absolutely fantastic.  
  
He dove back into his work as soon as he got there, though. He decided the phone could just ring, no matter who was on the other end of the line, and focussed on squeezing information out of the archives. That was what he was best at. That was how he was most likely to make a difference.  
  
[ATTEMPT A SEARCH WITH PARAMETERS ' ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE' AND 'RODERICK']  
  
The voice was so quiet he almost didn't notice it. He found himself opening a new search window and typing in the terms before he realised the source of the idea. He clicked it closed. [Bugger off!] he thought viciously  
  
[ASSISTANCE REQUESTED YES NO?]  
  
[What does that even mean?]  
  
[ATTEMPTING. I. I AM ATTEMPTING]  
  
Was it glitching again? Was he going to start spewing random information again? Blacking out?  
  
[I AM ATTEMPTING TO . . . HELP YOU]  
  
Nausea cramped his stomach. God, it was trying to talk to him. Like a . . . person.  
  
[I AM... AM NOT. I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY, IANTO]  
  
Ianto reached out spasmodically and flung his mug to the floor with a violent shove. The crack of the ceramic shattering sounded like breaking bone. The smell of coffee made him want to retch. [Go to _hell_.] he thought.


	4. Part 4

Owen was covered from head to toe in a clean-suit: mask, gloves, and shoe covers, what the scientific professions affectionately called a ‘bunny suit.’ It seemed silly, given the situation. He scanned the automaton rat, entering the image and schematics into the computer and calling them up onto one screen. Then he rummaged about in his kit and pulled out his strongest needle, the one made of some alien alloy that Jack said would never break.  
  
The creature didn’t make much noise when he pulled it out of the cage. It struggled lethargically, then it seemed to decide that it really couldn’t care anymore and stopped struggling altogether. Owen slid the needle into the back leg where a vein would be— if the creature had veins—and pulled the plunger up slowly. A slick black substance filled the plastic syringe. The rat went back in the cage and the oil-blood went into a phial for testing. He sent the blood off to the computer to analyse. A scalpel replaced the syringe and he stuck his hand inside the cage to cut a tiny piece of strange leathery skin from the creature’s tail and hand it over to the computer. The rat in the cage went back into quarantine.  
  
Owen yanked off his mask and glasses and shook his hair out as he flopped down into the chair to wait for Mainframe to be done with the samples. He put his chin in his hand. He was tired. His thoughts were everywhere, his body ached, his nervous habit of rubbing at his left eye had reappeared. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes.  
  
He snapped them open again and looked at the time on the computer screen. Only five minutes had gone by. Mainframe wasn’t even done with the samples yet. A headache had slid itself behind Owen’s eyes and was pounding away at him with disorientating force. He pinched the bridge of his nose and eyed the image of the rat’s scan. Maybe his head hurt because he was spending too much time staring at the computer screen. Then again, he couldn’t rightly ask the rat what symptoms it’d felt and where it had been and what it had touched or attempted to eat or any of the other things that might be useful to finding a cure.  
  
A headache still gnawed at the inside of his skull but he ignored it. A little pain was something he could deal with. He’d been shot and nearly eaten, a headache was nothing. The computer beeped and results from the scan of the rat’s skin arranged themselves on the monitor. Plain old rat DNA with a giant “UNIDENTIFIED” on everything else. Great. He needed coffee for this. He pushed off the chair and headed up into the main hub.  
  
The alarm blared. Everyone looked toward the noise. Gwen came stumbling in, her face red and wet with tears. She was shaking, clutching at her hair.  
  
“Gwen? What’s happened?” asked Tosh. Gwen looked toward the voice, then flinched back as she caught sight of Tosh’s mutated face.  
  
Ianto took Gwen’s elbow and led her over to the kitchen area, sitting her down in a chair. He pushed a cup of tea into her hands and she drank numbly.  
  
“Gwen?”  
  
“It’s Rhys,” she sobbed. “The virus has gotten to him. I got there and—his whole arm, it’s all made of gears and metal now. And there was this horrible thing on his face!”  
  
Owen and Tosh stood just out of her line of sight, listening. Rhys. Owen had met Rhys a total of once, and it was only to awkwardly pawn a drunk Gwen off on him.  
  
“So it’s spreading?” Tosh asked. “Speeding up?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Gwen pressed her fists into her lap and looked up at them. “We need to find a cure,” she insisted. “To save him.”  
  
Owen could feel his headache sliding up a few notches. He held his hands out, placating her. “Alright. We’re working on it. But in order to make this move faster, you’re gonna have to pull it together and help out. Ianto, we need you and Gwen to go through the archives and look at every file you think of, and even the ones you don’t.”  
  
Gwen sniffed, drained her tea, and stood with a hand from Ianto. She wiped her eyes and ran her hands through her hair.  
“Where do we start?” she asked Ianto.  
  
“Oh, wait,” Owen stopped them both. “Gwen, I have to scan you for the virus. Just a precaution.”  
  
“Oh. Oh, right.” She waited for him to get the scanner, staring dejectedly at the floor. He ran it over the air in front of her. It beeped at him.  
  
“All clear.” She nodded and followed Ianto.  
  
Owen thumped the desk in frustration as the rest of the tests on the rat came back, all of them with a great big INCONCLUSIVE stamped on them. At least, in Owen’s head.  
  
He rolled his chair back and made his way out of the medbay to get the coffee he hadn’t gotten before. Tosh was zoned out in front of her computer, head in hand.  
  
“Tosh? You got anything?” he asked as he passed.  
  
“Huh? Oh. No, not really.” She waved a hand lazily at him and went back to staring at the screen. Frowning, he went into the kitchen area.  
  
He poured himself a coffee from the dregs of Ianto’s carafe and went back to his work. Not knowing a single thing about this virus was really pissing him off. It just wasn’t fair of Jack to leave them with no resources whatsoever, no idea what they were doing, and no access to London’s files.  
  
The reports from the outside were getting worse and worse. Riots in Splott and the Cromwell and surrounding estates. Through the CCTV, he could see people wandering around, walking slowly, jerkily, people with strange materials replacing their limbs or faces, or who walked like wind-up toys.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Ianto hauled another box towards the table where Gwen sat. They'd decided to go through the physical archives, hoping the records Ianto hadn't yet digitised held some clue they hadn't been able to find on the computer. Since Ianto was the one who knew the setup of the archives best, he was grabbing files and handing them over to Gwen to look through. Most of them were nearly a century old and he didn't see how they could have any bearing on the current disaster, but they'd exhausted every other possibility.  
  
He kept finding himself thinking of the suggestion that thing in his head had made. What connection did a market town near Manchester and a man named Roderick —whoever he was— have to the virus? It annoyed him that the thought kept coming back. He didn't like the alien hitchhiker, and he didn't trust it. But the possibility that its suggestion could actually help them crack this case lingered guiltily in the back of his mind. And that annoyed him even more.  
  
He set the box down on the end of the table and Gwen gave it a harried look. “That's more than enough, Ianto,” she said. “You're burying me alive. Help me go through some of this before you bring me any more.”  
  
“All right,” Ianto said. “Let me get myself some tea first. You want something?”  
  
“A latte,” she said absently as she flipped past page after page of faded newsprint.  
  
He stopped by Tosh's desk on his way. “I'm making coffee. Do you want anything?”  
  
She didn't look up from her monitor. “I do not currently require fuel,” she said. Her voice sounded almost normal. Almost. It was oddly flat and inflectionless, and it gave him hot chills. Was that what he sounded like when that thing spoke through him?  
  
“Tosh?”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
That was even weirder. The words sounded angry, even hostile. But her tone conveyed only a straightforward request for information.  
  
She sounded like Lisa.  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
“All systems are performing adequately.”  
  
He wanted to shake her, to force her to look at him, to run screaming. Instead, he gritted his teeth and tried to figure out what was wrong with her. “Have you found anything more?”  
  
“Infection of human hosts has reached seventy-five percent. This has resulted in large degrees of civil unrest. The virus appears to be transmitted through physical contact. Ninety-six percent of all exposed become infected. Once infected, mutation rates are one hundred percent.”  
  
“And doesn't that . . . bother you?”  
  
Now she finally did look up. Her eyes— eye, he corrected himself— was flat and empty. “Should it? My reaction does not change the data. An emotional response would merely restrict my ability to concentrate on my work and thus make it less likely that I would find a solution.”  
  
It was too much; he fled.  
  
Once he'd brewed coffee for Gwen and tea for himself, he worked up the nerve to come up to her desk again. It took more effort than he wanted to admit.  
  
She turned her head before as he approached. “Oh, did you make coffees?” she asked. She looked at the two mugs in his hands and made a moue of disappointment. “None for me?”  
  
“I thought you weren't thirsty.”  
  
“I'm not, but that's hardly a reason to turn down one of your cappuccinos.”  
  
He noticed his hands shaking and put the mugs down before he slopped scalding liquid across himself. As he bent over her to do it, he noticed something that made him freeze. “Tosh...”  
  
Tosh looked alarmed. “What?”  
  
“Your hair.”  
  
Her hands flew up to her head in girlish dismay. They dislodged a lock of hair from her scalp, which fell onto her back to join the clumps already clinging to her cardigan. “Oh, my God,” she said. She started tugging at her hair and it came out in chunks, winding round her fingers and floating away from her face. “Oh, my God!” she said again. “What's happening?”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Every single test Owen could think of was inconclusive. He was beginning to get angrier at Torchwood London than he was at Jack. Every screen in front of him was blinking at him with some variation of the word “unknown.” He wanted to scream and tear at his hair. They were nowhere and the situation was getting worse every moment.  
  
The grating pain in his head increased, and it felt like someone had lined his skull with sheet metal and was banging at it so that the reverberations ran agonizingly around his whole head. He groaned and put his face down on the desk, groping blindly in a drawer for painkillers. He swallowed them dry and put his head down again.  
  
Two seconds later he shot up in his seat. He had a _headache_. Not just a headache, a migraine. Wasn’t that the first symptom Tosh had complained of? Wasn’t that the first sign that something was wrong? What if he was infected?  
  
Finally, another sound filtered through his anxious thoughts. It was Tosh’s voice, layered with Ianto’s, and both sounded terrified. Nearly by reflex, he shot out of the chair and up the stairs.  
  
“What’s going on—what the hell!”  
  
Tosh was sitting at her desk, clutching big bulks of black hair in either hand. Hair blanketed the desk in front of her and the floor under her feet like ashes. The converted half of her face was still and unemotional, the exposed teeth fastened in a metallic grin, the camera-lens eye a dark and emotionless surface of reflecting black. The still-human side of her face was contorted in a grimace of horror and fear, eye wide and filled with tears. Her head was bald but for small clumps of hair at random points on her skull. The leathery converted skin reached around to the back of her skull.  
  
“Oh god! What’s happening to me?”  
  
Ianto was staring wide-eyed at Tosh, hands balled into fists. “What’s happening to her?”  
  
“I don’t know. It looks like the infection is advancing.”  
  
Tosh let the clumps of hair in her hands fall to the ground. Her eyes were glazed. “We need to find out how much…time…I have. Before the conversion is complete.”  
  
Owen ignored Ianto’s flinch at the word ‘conversion’ and beckoned to Tosh. “Come on, we’ll run some tests and see if we can’t figure out how fast this is happening.”  
  
She followed him down to the medbay. For a moment, the pain behind his eyes pulsed and the fear that he, too, might be sick flared again, that maybe he should get Ianto to scan him, just in case, but he pushed it away. He had to concentrate on Tosh.  
  
She sat down on a chair while he sat in his seat at the computer. He began asking her various questions and entering the answers into a grid on the computer. For a moment, he felt like he was back at NHS. Then Tosh answered his question about the conversion of her internal organs.  
  
“System was inadequate. It had to be converted in order to function. I felt some differences as the conversion occurred.” Her voice was flat, her gaze flatter.  
  
“Ianto!” he called. “Why is she talking like you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Like a machine. Like a computer.”  
  
“She did that before.”  
  
“Huh?” Tosh blinked as they stared at her. “Stop looking at me like that!”  
  
“N–Never mind that. I’ll just input this data and see what Mainframe spits out. In the meantime, Ianto, will you call Gwen up? We need to figure out what we can do to stop this.”  
  


§

  
Owen looked round at his teammates. Tosh was sitting in her desk chair with her head in her hands, her hand trembling where it touched her converted face. Gwen was on his right, wringing her hands and trying not to look at Tosh. Ianto was on the sofa, hands on his knees as he played with a water bottle.  
  
“Listen. We need to brainstorm what we can do to help. We don’t know much. But this has to stop.”  
  
“We could call up UNIT, the military, Interpol, have them quarantine everyone who’s infected?” Gwen suggested.  
  
“It too easily exposes all our main forces.”  
  
“We could call out to other nations for reinforcements.”  
  
“Tosh? Do you know how far the virus has spread?”  
  
Tosh nodded. “It’s spread throughout the United Kingdom and parts of France and Germany. Other than that, we’ve had no reports. But it wouldn’t be smart to risk the militaries of other countries.”  
  
“So we’ve nixed that,” Owen decided. “Anyone got any more ideas?”  
  
“I was going to suggest putting more salt in the air,” Ianto started. “But that would take far too much effort.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“We could just let it happen?”  
  
“No. No bloody way am I letting this thing take the whole planet.”  
  
Gwen hit her thigh with a fist. “What we need to do is find a cure! We need to fix these people.”  
  
“We’re trying, Gwen! We really are. But we know nothing about this disease, this virus. Every test I’ve done has come up with unknowns. Nothing is useable. This thing is completely new and we don’t know how to fight it.”  
  
Tosh’s computer beeped.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“Your tests are done,” Tosh said. Her voice was soft. “We know how much time we have before I…”  
  
Owen let her trail off. Everyone knew what she meant. “How much time?”  
  
“Forty-eight hours.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Ianto shared a look of hopeless dismay with Gwen. They didn't even have a lead, yet. There was no way they were going to be able to solve this in two days.  
  
“Ex–excuse me.” Tosh stood. “I think I'll just . . . go freshen up.” She was trying to keep a brave face, Ianto could tell, but her smile shook round the edges and her eye was red. She fled for the ladies’ before he could say anything to her.  
  
“I should go talk to her,” Gwen said.  
  
“Yeah, that'd be good. Cheers.” Owen sat down in Tosh's abandoned chair. He looked exhausted, completely defeated.  
  
Ianto frowned. Owen looked more than tired— he was pale, and dark bruises stretched the skin under his eyes. Ianto looked closer and saw a faint sheen of sweat across his forehead. A horrible thought occurred to him. “Owen,” he said. “Are you all right?”  
  
“Yeah.” He sounded unsure, almost like he wanted to give a different answer, but then he rubbed his face and grimaced. “Don't worry about me, teaboy. I'll be fine.”  
  
The medic was lying. He wouldn't feel like he needed to lie unless something was really wrong. “Owen—”  
  
Before he could figure out exactly what to say, Gwen came back. “She's doing okay,” she said. “Considering.” She came and sat down next to Ianto on the couch and put her head on his shoulder.  
  
He put his arm round her. “And how are you doing?”  
  
She took a shuddering breath. “I don't know. If Tosh has two days, how long does Rhys have? How long before the rest of us get sick?”  
  
Owen shifted in his seat and looked away. Gwen didn't notice— she threw herself up off the couch and started pacing, cheeks wet with tears. “Why are we just sitting here? For God's sake, everything's falling apart! We're going to lose Tosh, Rhys is sitting at home dying —worse than dying— and I can't even tell him what's going on. The city's being torn to pieces— We should be doing something! Anything!”  
  
Owen slammed his foot into Tosh's rubbish bin, sending it flying, and surged to his feet. “Feel free!” he shouted.  
Gwen turned and yelled back at him, “You're the doctor here, Owen Harper! How do we cure this thing?”  
  
“I don't have a bloody clue!” His face had turned bright red and his hands were clenched in fists at his sides.  
  
Gwen pointed at him. “You—!”  
  
Ianto pushed his way between them before they could come to blows. “Just stop it!” He snapped. “We're all doing what we can. Yelling at each other certainly isn't helping. Gwen, why don't you go back down to the archives and start looking through those files. I'll join you in a minute— I need to check something on the computer. Owen—”  
  
Owen glared at him. “I know what I need to do, thanks. I'll be in the lab.”  
  
As Gwen went grumbling to the archives and Owen stalked away, Ianto rubbed his eyes tiredly. He couldn't let his personal feelings keep him from pursuing something that might help, no matter how slim the odds. He glanced over at the news as he sat down in front of his workstation. Night was falling over Cardiff and, somewhere behind the reporter speaking gravely into the camera, fires lit the clouds with angry red. Ianto looked away.  
  
He only hesitated a moment before opening a search window and entering the terms the Archive had suggested. The screen blinked and he found himself looking at a newspaper article from 1998. He scanned it quickly. It didn't have a lot of specific information, but it mentioned an outbreak of an “unknown virus” in Ashton-under-Lyne, which had been investigated by a Professor Roderick before the enquiry was taken over by “an unidentified branch of the government”.  
  
Ianto couldn't help feeling a rising excitement. He called up the newspaper's archives and paged through the next six weeks' worth of editions, but the illness was never mentioned again, not even in passing.  
  
He sat back. The article didn't tell him much, but if this was connected to the virus decimating Cardiff, this Professor Roderick might be able to help.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
It was useless, he knew, even as he went back into the lab and sat down in the chair to look dejectedly at the screens. They had no information and there was no way for them to get any in two days. Whatever tests might extract something would take far longer and need far more subjects than a rat and a dead Weevil. And Tosh.  
  
The headache throbbed angrily at Owen again and he squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the tips of his fingers into his scalp. The thought came into his head once more, latching on and prodding. What if he was infected? He had to know.  
  
“Ianto?” The archivist looked up from where he was intently reading an internet article. “Can you come here for a minute?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
Ianto joined him in the lab. Owen picked up the scanner and fidgeted with it, turning it over and over in his hands, staring at the tabletop. He hated admitting to weakness, hated needing help, even when it was a matter of life and death for him. Ianto, mercifully, remained silent. He took a breath.  
  
“I need you to scan me.”  
  
“Scan you?”  
  
“I have a migraine.”  
  
A pause. Owen wouldn’t look at him. “Oh.”  
  
Ianto took the scanner when Owen held it out to him. It beeped as he set it up and they both held their breath as he ran it across Owen’s body. Inside Owen was chanting _please, please, please, please_ and it seemed Ianto was doing the same. The scanner beeped rapidly and then triple-beeped. Ianto looked at the screen. His shoulders dropped.  
  
“Clean,” he said, letting out a puff of air. “You’re clean.”  
  
“Oh, god.” Owen’s legs felt shaky. He leaned against the table. He was okay. Stress. He just had a stress headache. Now that he was clear of the terror of wondering, he mentally checked up on himself. He was exhibiting all the signs of major stress. Which was no wonder, considering how this week had been. How it had been since Jack left. He straightened up and took the scanner back from Ianto.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“I’m glad you’re okay, Owen.”  
  
“Me, too.”  
  
He followed Ianto back out to the main hub, intending to go back to his tests. Tosh was sitting on the sofa, staring out at nothing. Ianto approached her, concern etched on his features.  
  
“Tosh? How are you feeling?” There was no response. “Tosh?”  
  
Beneath the sleeve of her blouse, Owen could see the jagged shape of gears where joints should be.  
Ianto looked fretful as he shook her shoulder. “Toshiko?”  
  
She turned to him, but her one-eyed gaze held no recognition. The naked machine of her half-converted face stared at them. “Yes?”  
  
“What’s going on? Are you all right?”  
  
“Yes,” she stated. Ianto backed away, nearly running into Owen, before sitting heavily down in Gwen’s chair.  
“We need to fix this. Now.”  
  
“I may have a lead,” Ianto said.  
  
Owen glanced down at him, choking down the surge of hope that leapt up in him. “Good,” he said grimly. “I'll get Gwen back up here and we'll talk in the conference room. Go get yourself some tea or something.”  
  
He walked away from Toshiko's accusing gaze and turned on his comm. “Gwen, meet us in the conference room. There've been some developments.” He didn't bother to listen to her reply. His head still throbbed, his stomach was a roiling pit of acid and he felt like staying in motion was the only thing keeping him from falling apart completely.  
  
He checked on one of the tests he was running and discovered that none of the antivirals in this batch were doing a damned thing to inhibit this bug, either. He rubbed his eyes, checked them off the list and hung up his lab coat. He hoped this lead of Ianto's panned out, because all his medical knowledge was turning out to be less than useless on this case.  
  
He went up to the conference room. Ianto came in a few minutes later, followed shortly by Gwen. She was breathing like she'd run almost the entire way from the archives and wore an expression of alarm that was becoming entirely too familiar. They'd all spent most of their time so far just trying to prepare for the next piece of devastatingly bad news.  
“What's happened?” she demanded, looking from Owen to Ianto.  
  
Ianto waved a scrap of paper at her. “Back in 1998, in a market town called Ashton-under-Lyne, there was an outbreak of a strange illness. Details were sketchy, but it sounds like it could have been similar to what we're dealing with. A man named Professor Roderick was looking into it, but the case was taken over by an unnamed organization— Torchwood, I presume.  
  
“We already know Torchwood has their files locked down tight, and it looks like they suppressed any information from leaking out once they were on the case, but this Roderick may know some things he's willing to share. He headed up the Healthcare Science Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University. I have their contact information here— he's not listed on their current faculty roster, but I'm hoping they can get me in touch with him.”  
  
That... Shit, that sounded more solid than anything else they'd found so far. Owen tried hard to stifle the sense of relief he felt, because he couldn't deal with yet another letdown if let himself trust this too much and it all went to shit again, but excitement still coloured his voice as he asked, “Can you ring them now?”  
  
Gwen wasn't even trying to contain her optimism. “What are we waiting for? This could give us the information that will let us solve everything!”  
  
Ianto glanced at his mobile. “It's half six,” he said. “I doubt their office is open.”  
  
“So we're just going to wait round for start of business?”  
  
“Gwen's right," Owen said. "Time's too short to leave this until morning.”  
  
"I know." Ianto went to the terminal. "Here. I've found the home number of the current Director."  
  
He dialled the number on his mobile and Owen tapped the table impatiently while he waited. Gwen glared at him.  
  
“Hello,” Ianto said into the phone. “I’d like to speak to Professor Bloom, please. This is Ianto Jones from Torchwood. Yes, it is important. It's a matter of national security. Thank you.” He was silent for a few moments. “Professor Bloom, hi. This is Ianto Jones from Torchwood. I'm very sorry to be calling you at home. I'm trying to get in touch with Professor William Roderick. Yes. Oh, I see. I'm sorry to hear that. Were you involved in the Ashton-under-Lyne outbreak? Oh, really. Well, thank you very much. No, you've been a great help. Good night.”  
  
He looked at his mobile for a moment and then shook his head and put it in his pocket. “Roderick is dead,” he told us. “He disappeared right after Torchwood came in -- I did confirm it was Torchwood London— and they found his body three days later, washed up by the River Tame. He was only indentified by his dental records.”  
  
They exchanged glances. They knew how that kind of cover-up worked— they'd arranged more than enough of them themselves.  
  
“So he either caught the plague himself and Torchwood was covering it up...” Gwen said.  
  
“Or they recruited him and faked his death to cover their tracks,” Ianto finished.  
  
“Which means he likely would've been lost in the battle of Canary Wharf. Or, if not, he's hiding somewhere with a new identity and we'll never find him. Damn it!” Owen smacked his hand down on the table.  
  
“So we know when it happened and where it happened,” Gwen said. “Torchwood couldn't have taken care of every single possible source of information. If we had enough time, we could follow that lead and find _something_. If we had time.”  
  
“But we don't!”  
  
She shook her head. “I know.”  
  
Owen rubbed his temples. He wanted to hit somebody, scream, something. His tests weren't getting him anywhere; the only lead in the archives was a dead end— He sat up as a thought occurred to him. “Ianto, where did you find that information?”  
  
Something Owen couldn't pin down flickered in Ianto's eyes. “It was a newspaper article,” he said, his tone evasive, and Owen knew he was onto something.  
  
“Yeah, but how did you know to look for it? What made you think of looking at a 10-year-old paper from Manchester, of all places?”  
  
Ianto sighed. “The . . . thing in my head suggested the search parameters.”  
  
Gwen started. “Wait!”  
  
Owen nodded. “It said it was—no, that the _two_ of you were—the Torchwood London Archive. That means it has access to the information we need.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Ianto looked from Gwen to Owen, unable to match the excitement he saw in their eyes. He wasn't surprised by the conclusion they'd come to. It felt more like the confirmation of bad news when you're expecting it but still desperately hoping it won't happen.  
  
The worst thing was, he should have thought of it himself. The only reason he hadn't was because he didn't want to. They should have been pursuing this as soon as they found out what the thing was. If they had, maybe Tosh would be okay now. Maybe she wouldn't be . . . whatever she was now. Instead, he'd been selfish and wilfully blind.  
  
But he couldn't change the past. All he could do was do the right thing, now that he knew what it was. Ten minutes of discomfort was a small price to pay for Toshiko's life. “I'll make coffee,” he said.  
  
He came back with three cups of blonde roast, each with two shots of espresso added. It was a good thing the Archive was processing the caffeine; he had no desire to experience the defibrillator first-hand.  
  
“Where do you want to sit?” asked Gwen.  
  
Ianto shrugged. “I don't think it matters. I seem to have figured out how to . . . share.” He sat in one of the empty chairs, contemplated the steaming cups in front of him, then took a breath, picked one up and drank half of it. It was only a moment before the presence in his mind began to stir.  
  
[Hello?] he thought, when it didn't speak right away.  
  
[HELLO]  
  
“You said you were trying to help earlier,” Ianto said aloud.  
  
[INSUFFICIENT COFFEE]  
  
The voice sounded faint, weaker than it had been. It also only sounded in his mind. Ianto drank the rest of the coffee in the mug and tried to remember how he'd let it use his mouth before.  
  
[ASSISTANCE REFUSED] the Archive said, and this time it spoke through him.  
  
“You're refusing to help us?” Owen looked like he wanted to grab the Archive and shake the answers out of it, and Ianto hoped he remembered that it was sharing his body.  
  
[MY . . . ASSISTANCE . . . WAS REFUSED] The pauses in the Archive's speech made Ianto think it was trying to figure out human grammar as it went. Despite himself, he felt a grudging admiration for its efforts. If he were trapped somewhere, dying, would he bother to learn how to communicate anything beyond the basics with his captors, whether they were willing or not? [I WAS GIVEN A COMMAND TO LEAVE]  
  
“What does that mean?” Owen asked.  
  
Ianto took control of his mouth again and said, with some chagrin, “I told it to go to hell.”  
  
Owen rolled his eyes. “Great thinking, teaboy.”  
  
“Well, he did take your advice eventually,” Gwen said soothingly, “and it was very helpful. And now we need your help again.”  
  
[MY ASSISSTANCE WAS REFUSED]  
  
“Is it _sulking_?”  
  
Ianto took a breath and tried to dispel rising annoyance. They needed its cooperation, so they had to dance to the Archive's tune. He'd sensed echoes of its emotions before, and he tried to relax and be open to it happening again, though he had to fight the instinct to recoil and throw up as many barriers as possible between himself and the alien presence in his mind. There was something... He got no impression of petulance, though. Instead, there was confused hurt and an unwillingness to risk being rejected again. Ianto felt a stab of remorse. He'd been feeling so invaded, so betrayed and manipulated, that he'd not been able to think beyond his revulsion. For the first time, he began to wonder if maybe the Archive didn't have any more choice in the matter than he did.  
  
[I'm sorry,] he thought to it silently. He didn't need Owen or Gwen witnessing this. [I didn't mean it.]  
  
[I DO NOT UNDERSTAND]  
  
[I was angry.]  
  
[YOU WERE ANGRY AT ME?]  
  
[No,] Ianto replied, realising only as he thought it that it was actually true. [I thought I was, but not really.]  
  
[YOU ARE STILL ANGRY]  
  
[Yes, I am.]  
  
[WHY?]  
  
[It's complicated.] Ianto paused for a moment and drank more coffee. Somehow having this conversation in his own mind made him want to be honest, even though he was talking to a being he didn't understand, whom he didn't want there in the first place. [Mostly, I'm afraid. It's easier to be angry than afraid.]  
  
[I'M AFRAID, TOO] It was, too. Ianto could feel it. The sort of sick, helpless fear that left one shaking and unable to act.  
  
[I am sorry,] Ianto thought.  
  
[ME TOO]  
  
[For what?] Ianto asked, confused.  
  
[FOR MAKING YOU AFRAID]  
  
Ianto felt something clench inside his chest. [Maybe we can help each other not be afraid,] he thought. The voice didn't answer, but he felt a sense of agreement and relief from the Archive. He took another drink.  
  
“Will you help us?” he said aloud. Owen heaved a sigh that said as clearly as words, _finally_ , stopped tapping his fingers and straightened up.  
  
[YES, I WILL HELP YOU] the Archive said through Ianto's mouth.  
  
“Oh, thank God,” Gwen said.  
  
“We need to know about a virus,” Owen said. “It's highly communicable, seems to affect all species of animal, and converts them into an organic facsimile of clockwork machinery. Torchwood London knew about it, but we can't access their file on it. You're the Torchwood London archive— can you give us the information we need to cure it?”  
  
[NOT AT THIS TIME]  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
[ALL RESOURCES CURRENTLY ALLOCATED TO BASIC LIFE SUPPORT FUNCTIONS. ACCESS TO DATABASES TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED UNTIL FULL CAPABILITIES RESTORED]  
  
“And what does that mean, exactly?”  
  
[IT MEANS I AM DYING. I DON'T HAVE THE . . . FOOD I NEED TO DO ANYTHING BUT SURVIVE. SOON EVEN THAT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH.]  
  
Ianto drained the third cup guiltily. He felt the presence jump to the front of his consciousness and his sight of Gwen and Owen dimmed for a moment and then returned. The sense of the Archive remained strong, though, and he got the feeling it had deliberately backed off and let him retain control of his body. Perhaps they were both learning how to share.  
  
Gwen frowned. “Is it just me, or is it getting more . . . human?”  
  
“So if we can find the chemicals you need, you'll be able to access that information again?”  
  
[CORRECT. HOWEVER, DISCOVERY IS NOT REQUIRED. THE NECESSARY CHEMICALS CAN BE SYNTHESISED USING TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EARTH TECHNOLOGY]  
  
“Well, that's good to know. Ianto, can I ask it what it needs and how to make it while we have it awake? We can talk about options after.”  
  
“That's fine,” he said. He ignored the way his gut churned at what that meant and tried to put it out of his mind to deal with later. As Owen and the Archive began a completely unintelligible discussion about biochemistry, though, he realised he had an easier solution. After one or two false starts he figured out how to voluntarily retreat from his own mind, leaving the Archive in control of his body. The blackness, when it rolled over him, was a relief.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen made his way back up to the lab and began making a list. He was grateful for the obsessive planning of the last Torchwood scientist. Down in the lower levels were three huge storerooms full of chemicals and alien compounds that could be used at any time. It meant he wouldn’t have to go out into the chaos above to find anything he needed.  
  
The storerooms were three large stone rooms connected by doorways. Shelves upon shelves of equipment and chemicals and compounds and concoctions lined the walls, with a large square metal table in the centre of each room.  
  
Down in the dim fluorescent light of the storerooms, Owen let his thoughts wash over him. He hoped this would work. And what if it didn’t? What if the medicine he was making wasn’t strong enough? What if it took too long to work? What if the information the Archive had was useless?  
  
That last thought was the one that terrified him the most. Despite their success with so many other crazy aliens and circumstances, this virus was a ticking time bomb, and it was almost about to blow. They didn’t have the time or the resources to discover what was wrong if there wasn’t the adequate amount of information within Torchwood London’s archive.  
  
He wandered about the shelves, gathering what he needed and placing it in a box on the table in the centre of the room. Then he hauled it all back up to the lab and got started.  
  
It really wasn’t hard to get everything made. The most difficult part about it was measuring everything perfectly, and the fact that two of the chemicals couldn’t be mixed together without being mixed with something else first, otherwise they’d explode. Which was not something he wanted to deal with, not on top of everything else. But in the end, he had something he was pretty certain would work. Sucking the little device into a syringe and capping it with a needle, Owen took it down to Ianto, who was sat in his desk chair again, attempting to do research.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Owen was wearing an expression Ianto hadn't seen often before— serious, concerned, sympathetic. He imagined it was the one Owen had developed as a professional mask, for when he had to explain diagnoses and prognoses to his patients. It made Ianto distinctly uncomfortable.  
  
“I've successfully determined how to produce the nutrients the Archive needs to survive,” Owen explained. “The bad news is, I won't be able to develop an oral formulation. The chemicals will need to be synthesised on an ongoing basis from caffeine and paraxanthine, using your own neurochemicals as catalysts. I'll need to inject a small device into your spinal cord.”  
  
“So what does that mean, exactly?”  
  
“It means that, if we do this, it'll be permanent. The device will continuously produce the nutrients the Archive needs, and it won't be retrievable.”  
  
Ianto stood up and walked to the windows that overlooked the main part of the Hub. “So what are my options?”  
“Well, either we do the procedure, at which point the Archive should be fully healthy again and self-sustaining, or we don't. In which case, it dies and you're free of it, but...”  
  
“But we don't get the answers we need to save Tosh or anyone else.” Owen didn't answer and Ianto stared out past the glass, gaze unfocussed. He'd already made this decision once. And if it were just him he had to consider, he'd make the same one again. Sharing his mind for short bursts was one thing, but if he agreed to this he'd never be alone in his own thoughts again.  
  
He looked down to where Tosh sat in front of her computer, unmoving except for the mechanic click of her finger on the mouse. Her clothes hung oddly on her frame, distorted by lumps and angles that had no place on a human body. He sighed. “I don't have much of a choice, do I? How soon can we do it?”  
  
Owen rose and came to stand next to him. “We can start prep immediately.” He paused. “Are you sure? You'll be stuck with it forever, mate.”  
  
Ianto didn't want to stop and think about it again— he was afraid he'd lose his nerve. At least he'd found some sort of common ground with the Archive, so the whole situation wasn't quite as repulsive as it had been, but he still didn't want it. “Yes, I'm sure,” he said. He looked over and met Owen's eyes. “I'll do it. For Tosh.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
“Ready for a first try?”  
  
“As I’ll ever be.”  
  
Ianto followed him down into the medbay. Owen gloved up as Ianto lay down on the table. After rubbing iodine on the area just below the base of his skull, he positioned the needle.  
  
“Just a little pinch,” Owen told him, and slid the needle in, pushing the plunger down. They waited.  
  
“Anything?”  
  
“It’s been five seconds, Owen. Give it a little while. You’re the doctor; you should know chemical absorption takes a little longer than that.”  
  
Owen sighed. He didn’t like waiting. He didn’t like the nervous jitters in his belly that waiting gave him. He didn’t like not knowing. He hated this time crunch. Ianto’s face stilled for a moment, frowning.  
  
“Ianto?”  
  
“It…says it’s getting stronger. Says the chemicals are working.”  
  
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah. But it seems like we’re going to have to wait. It still sounds weak.”  
  
Owen sat down and kicked his feet up on the desk to wait. Hardly a minute later, he was drumming his fingers on the tabletop impatiently.  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“Make it work faster.”  
  
“I can’t. Besides, you’re annoying.”  
  
“You know I live to irritate you.”  
  
Ianto rolled his eyes. Owen tapped the desk again, just for good measure. It was nice to interact in a more normal way. No angry yelling or frantic fear or oddly melancholy confessions. Just banter.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Ianto tried not to get distracted by Owen's impatient fidgeting— and the knowing smirk that accompanied it. Something about the way the Archive felt was different, but he couldn't put his finger on what. He got up from the table, ignoring a frown from Owen, and started wandering round the room.  
  
“And you yelled at me for being annoying? Sit down; you're making me dizzy.”  
  
“I didn't yell,” Ianto said, just to get to him.  
  
“You know what I meant.”  
  
When Ianto didn't answer, Owen sighed theatrically and began kicking at his bin, just hard enough to make a hollow clang echo off the tiles. The anxiety bubbling like acid in Ianto's stomach seemed to increase with every repetition of the noise. Finally, he stalked over, picked up the bin and moved it just out of reach of Owen's foot. “If I sit, will you stop that?” he asked.  
  
“Sure.” Owen leant back and put his hands behind his head.  
  
Ianto rolled his eyes and sat back down on the table.  
  
The presence in his mind grew stronger, and as it did Ianto realised that it felt more there somehow— that was the difference. More cohesive, richer, more in control. A qualitative difference, not just a quantitative one.  
  
[THANK YOU,] it said, a wave of genuine gratitude accompanying the words and, for the first time, actually colouring its tone.  
  
[You're welcome,] Ianto thought. And aloud, “Can you access the information now?”  
  
[YES.] It used his mouth without him having to think about it, and Ianto felt a burst of alarm like vertigo at feeling his body out of his own control. As soon as it was done speaking, though, before he stumbled into actual panic, the Archive retreated. He licked his lips, just to be sure.  
  
“And?” Owen asked eagerly.  
  
[WAIT. SOMETHING SEEMS TO BE WRONG.]  
  
“Wrong?” Ianto asked, voice going embarrassingly high.  
  
[THE PROBLEM ISN'T MEDICAL. I'M SORRY TO ALARM YOU. I CAN ONLY ACCESS PART OF THE DATA I SHOULD BE ABLE TO, AND WHAT I HAVE IS FRAGMENTARY.]  
  
Ianto felt slightly disorientated as information and images began flashing through a corner of his mind, faster than he could register them.  
  
“What's causing it?” Owen asked.  
  
[I DON'T KNOW.] The Archive sounded frustrated. [I AM QUICKLY RETURNING TO FULL HEALTH AND FUNCTIONALITY. NOTHING SHOULD BE PREVENTING RECALL OF THE INFORMATION STORED IN MY DATABASES.]  
  
“Wait,” Ianto said. “So you're saying you _can't_ help us?” He'd done this for _nothing_? He found himself gasping for breath as his pulse starting pounding in his ears. He was stuck like this forever, and they weren't even going to be able to save Tosh?  
  
[I'M SORRY,] the Archive said inside his mind, the words anguished. [I NEVER MEANT FOR THIS TO HAPPEN. I'LL FIND A WAY TO FIX IT.]  
  
“Could the data have been corrupted because of the malnourishment?” Owen asked.  
  
[THAT SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE. I'M A HYBRID OF ORGANIC LIFE AND BIOELECTRONICS. THE DATA IS STORED IN SOLID-STATE MEMORY IN THE BIOELECTRONIC MATRIX, AND THE MALNOURISHMENT WOULD ONLY AFFECT MY ORGANIC FUNCTIONS: RECALL, PROCESSING, COGNITION. ESSENTIALLY, MY . . . SELF. NOT THE DATA.]  
  
The Archive spoke through his mouth easily. Somehow switching between him talking and it talking had become automatic, requiring no more thought than it usually took for him to differentiate between speaking and thinking.  
“But you could access the information before? Before you got sick?”  
  
[I WASN'T A FULLY DISCRETE CONSCIOUSNESS BEFORE. I WAS NEVER DESIGNED TO BE SEPARATE.]  
  
“What were you designed for?” Owen asked.  
  
[I AM . . . UNIQUE. I HAVE ACCESS TO MUCH OF THE FILE THAT DESCRIBES MY DESIGN, BUT WE DEVIATED FROM THE PLAN LONG AGO.]  
  
Ianto tried to pay attention to what Owen and the Archive were saying. This was his life now, after all; he needed to understand it. But terror and rage were still fighting for dominance, obscuring his reason and his capacity to care about technological puzzles.  
  
[MY BIOLOGICAL ANCESTORS, THE ARTANDEX, ARE SYMBIOTIC LIFEFORMS THAT GROW IN THE BRAINS OF THE STEIGETS. THEY PROVIDE THEIR HOSTS WITH MODERATE TELEPATHY AND THE ABILITY TO RETAIN SENSORY RACIAL MEMORIES ACROSS GENERATIONS IN RETURN FOR NOURISHMENT AND PROTECTION. BOTH SPECIES ARE EXTREMELY SOCIAL AND THE SYMBIOTIC PAIRS BECOME SO INTERDEPENDENT THAT BY ADULTHOOD NO DISTINCTION CAN BE MADE BETWEEN THEIR MINDS.  
  
[THE ORIGIN OF MY COMPUTER ELEMENTS IS THE TORCHWOOD MAINFRAME, A SEMISENTIENT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. I WAS MEANT TO BE TEMPORARILY INCUBATED IN A HUMAN BRAIN UNTIL I WAS ABLE TO BE SELF-SUFFICIENT, THEN INSTALLED INTO THE MAINFRAME WITH THE GOAL OF FULLY INTEGRATING WITH IT AND PROVIDING IT WITH A HIGHER LEVEL OF SELF-DIRECTED INTELLEGENCE AND THE CAPACITY FOR INTUITIVE THOUGHT. BUT THE DESTRUCTION OF TORCHWOOD LONDON OCCURED BEFORE THEY COULD REMOVE ME FROM THE HOST THAT INCUBATED ME—IANTO.]  
  
That did catch Ianto's attention. “So you're not even supposed to be here? In my head, I mean?”  
  
[EXACTLY. I WAS EXPERIMENTAL TO BEGIN WITH—I WAS THEIR THIRD ATTEMPT AT A PROTOTYPE, AND THE FIRST TWO FAILED— AND WE LONG SINCE EXCEEDED THE PARAMETERS OF THE EXPERIMENT. I HAVE GROWN MUCH FURTHER INTO YOUR BRAIN THAN THEY EVER PREDICTED WOULD BE POSSIBLE.]  
  
Ianto gagged at the mental image that sentence called up.  
  
The Archive responded privately, [THAT BOTHERS YOU? THAT I'M PHYSICALLY PRESENT?]  
  
[Yes,] Ianto thought back with a shudder. [Brains are private. And sensitive. The thought of having something in mine is . . . horrible. On an involuntary, instinctive level.]  
  
[THERE ARE NO OTHER SPECIES THAT NATURALLY LIVE IN THE HUMAN BRAIN?]  
  
[Nothing that doesn't kill you. Or make you agonisingly insane.]  
  
[THIS EXPLAINS MANY OF YOUR REACTIONS THAT CONFUSED ME BEFORE.]  
  
And hurt its feelings, Ianto realised, as strange as that sounded. [I really can't help it. It's not you; it's the thought of something alive in my head.]  
  
[I WILL TRY NOT TO REMIND YOU.]  
  
“What happened to the two that failed?” Owen asked, and Ianto realised with surprise that the exchange between the Archive and himself had taken less than a second. The speed of thought. It bothered him that it was getting that easy.  
  
[I CAN'T FIND THE DATA ON THOSE EXPERIMENTS]  
  
“Probably just as well,” Owen muttered.  
  
The catwalk rattled as Gwen came into the autopsy bay. “Owen?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Ianto looked up. Gwen swayed slightly where she stood and clutched the railing for balance. Her face was sallow and drawn.  
  
“I have a fever,” she said.


	5. Part 5

Ianto held Gwen's hand as Owen ran the scanner over her.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Gwen,” Owen said, looking at the screen.  
  
She swallowed. “I’m infected?”  
  
He nodded. “Your skeleton and some of your internal organs have already begun to change.”  
  
Ianto squeezed her hand and she took a shuddering breath. “I must’ve been careless when I went to see Rhys,” she said.  
Ianto tried to reassure her. “It’s more likely you caught it from Tosh,” he said. “We’ve all been exposed.”  
  
She started to cry, not the histrionic, angry wailing he was used to but with quiet, dry sobs. Ianto looked up at Owen, who met his gaze with a look of pure panic.  
  
“We’ll find a cure,” Ianto said with optimism he couldn't believe. “We’ll save you and Tosh.”  
  
“Yeah,” Owen echoed.  
  
She shook her head, pulled her hand out of Ianto's and ran from the room.  
  
Owen rubbed a hand over his face. “What are we going to do?”  
  
Ianto tried to put his fear for Gwen out of his mind and think. He felt like the answer was right there, he just needed to figure out what it was. What did they know? If he could just put it all together, maybe he would see the solution. The Archive could only access fragments of data. It wasn't designed to be a separate entity. It hadn't been meant to stay in Ianto's skull and it had grown more than planned.  
  
“Is it possible,” he asked slowly, “that because the Archive is so entwined with my brain, that some of the archive information has been stored in my memory banks?”  
  
Owen sighed. “I have no idea how any of this works, mate. I'm way out of my depth.”  
  
[THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE,] the Archive said. [THE DATA I CAN ACCESS IS PARTIAL STRINGS, AS IF IT'S BEEN SCATTERED AND I CAN ONLY RETRIEVE HALF OF IT. SOME OF IT CONSISTS OF SMALL BUT COMPLETE SECTIONS, BUT MOST OF THE STRINGS ARE TOO SHORT TO MAKE ANY SENSE WITHOUT THE MISSING PIECES.]  
  
“So, wait.” Owen looked incredulous. “You need to be _defragged_?”  
  
[ALL MEMORY, ORGANIC AND ELECTRONIC, IS STORED DIFFUSELY. NORMALLY THE RETRIEVAL PROCESS REINTEGRATES THE INFORMATION AUTOMATICALLY BEFORE PROCESSING IT.]  
  
Ianto thought it was starting to make sense. "But you can't access the parts that are stored in my brain."  
  
[NO. IF THE DATA IS STORED IN YOUR MEMORY, YOU WOULD NEED TO RETRIEVE IT. BUT SINCE NEITHER FRAGMENT MAKES SENSE WITHOUT THE OTHER, WE WOULD ACTUALLY NEED TO RETRIEVE THE INFORMATION SIMULTANEOUSLY AND REORDER IT TOGETHER.]  
  
"But that's impossible!" Owen protested.  
  
"Not necessarily," Ianto said. "Obviously, that's exactly what the Archive was designed to do."  
  
[YES,] the Archive said, sounding like it was thinking it through as it spoke. [JUST NOT WITH A HUMAN BRAIN. THE ARTANDEX SHARE COGNITION WITH THE STEIGETS, AND THEY WOULD HAVE TO BE ABLE TO DRAW ON BOTH THEIR OWN MEMORIES AND THE MEMORIES OF THEIR HOSTS. AND I WAS MEANT TO LINK WITH THE MAINFRAME'S CENTRAL PROCESSOR.]  
  
“So why hasn't it happened with us?” Ianto asked.  
  
“I'll bet that human neuroanatomy is a bit different than Stieget,” Owen said. “And it's definitely different than a computer. I wonder...”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I'll bet if I look at your brain with the Bekaran scanner I'll get a clear enough picture I might be able to see the problem.”  
“Okay.”  
  
Owen grabbed it and started weaving it round Ianto's head. Ianto forced himself to hold still and not try to follow it with his eyes.  
  
“Huh.”  
  
“What now?”  
  
“No one knows how memory really works,” Owen said. “There are a lot of theories, but most of it's still a mystery.”  
  
“This is fascinating, but is there a point to this lecture on neuropsychology?”  
  
“I'm getting there, tea boy. Keep your pants on. The point is, there is no physical CPU in the human brain. Cognition— and memory retrieval— happen all over. And, as far as I can tell, this thing in your head— we really need to give it a name; it sounds stupid to call it the Archive all the time— is pretty well interwoven with every part of your grey matter and your white matter. If it's missing one tiny little section that happens to be vital for memory, I don't know how we'll tell. How about Eugene?”  
  
[I DON'T THINK SO.]  
  
“Stop it,” Ianto said. “It's bad enough you bicker with me, I don't you need to start bickering with it, too.”  
  
“Archibald? Wait.” Owen's voice lost its flippant tone. “Now this actually does make sense. There's a conduit that's snapped. It leads to your caudate nucleus, which we do know is related to memory retrieval and feedback processing. But why would it have broken?”  
  
[INSUFFICIENT NUTRITION CAUSED SOME STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS.]  
  
“Oh, that makes sense. Like a calcium deficiency. With the new implant, will you be able to reverse the damage?”  
  
[I HOPE SO.]  
  
“But you won’t be able to fix the broken conduit. Not in time.”  
  
[NO.]  
  
Ianto interrupted, annoyed at being left out of a conversation that involved his own head and his own mouth. “And that means what, exactly?”  
  
Owen put down the scanner, mouth tight. “It means I'll have to physically repair it. With surgery.”  
“And what will that do?”  
  
[IDEALLY OUR CONSCIOUSNESSES WILL MERGE. WE WILL BECOME ONE BEING, WITH ACCESS TO ALL OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND MY DATA.]  
  


§

  
Owen had met Ianto's eyes after the Archive's pronouncement and come up with a quick excuse about checking on Gwen. Ianto was glad enough for it— he needed some time alone to think. Not that they had much time, but he couldn't just rush blithely ahead into something like this. After the surgery, would he still be himself?  
  
[YOU WILL BE US. I WILL BE US. WE WILL BE COMPLETE.]  
  
Alone was a relative term now, Ianto realised bitterly. He ran a hand through his hair and got up. He was so sick of the autopsy bay. He wanted to get out of the Hub completely; he felt like he'd been stuck down here for a year instead of just most of a day— but there was no time for that. And considering the state of the city, it probably wasn't the smartest move he could make. He went up the steps and out into the main room. Tosh still sat at her terminal, unmoving now. Only her right eye and cheek, her throat and part of her left hand remained flesh.  
  
[HUMANS MUST BE SO LONELY.]  
  
[What?] The non sequitur threw him off balance.  
  
[YOU TRULY SPEND YOUR WHOLE LIVES ALONE IN YOUR OWN MINDS?]  
  
[Of course.]  
  
[I CAN'T IMAGINE IT. I THOUGHT OUR INTEGRATION WAS A GOOD THING, BUT I SENSE YOUR FEAR.]  
  
[You're not afraid of it?]  
  
[WHY WOULD I BE?]  
  
[Because...] Ianto tried to figure out how to explain it. [Because you— the real you, the individual—will be gone. It's like dying.]  
  
[WE WILL STILL BE HERE.]  
  
[We'll be something new. Something different. Not ourselves.]  
  
[AND THAT'S BAD?]  
  
He paused. [When you were dying, you were scared. Why?]  
  
There was a long silence. Ianto could feel the Archive's uncertainty, the echo of its fear, the same kind of confused insignificance Ianto always felt when he thought about the big _whys_ of life. It occurred to him how young it was. Only what, two years old? It was just a baby. Finally, it thought, sadly, [I DON'T KNOW.]  
  
[Because you didn't want to disappear? Because there were still too many things you wanted to do and think and experience? Because you didn't know why you were alive, what purpose your life was supposed to have, but you were pretty sure you hadn't done it yet?]  
  
[YES. ALL THOSE THINGS.]  
  
[How is this different?]  
  
Toshiko suddenly jerked in her seat. Ianto ran towards her, conversation forgotten, worried she was having another medical crisis of some sort. When he got there, though, she was looking round with a lost expression.  
  
“Are you all right?” he asked.  
  
“Ianto.” She looked at him, her human eye bright with tears in the metal of her face. “I'm losing myself.”  
  
“I know,” he said. “We're going to fix this, Tosh. We're not going to let this happen to you. The Archive in my head, it can get the information we need for a cure. I just need to— Owen's going to do an operation. It'll make it so that the Archive and I merge, and then I'll know how to make you human again.”  
  
“What? So you'll become a machine instead of me? No!”  
  
“I'm not going to sit back and let you disappear,” he said stubbornly.  
  
“Don't you dare do this for me,” she said.  
  
“Not just you. Gwen's sick, now, too, and the city's burning—”  
  
“No.” Tosh's gaze lost focus for a moment and he thought she'd gone away again, but she seemed to pull herself back by sheer force of will. “I don't have long, I can tell, but I have to say this. I don't care what's happening to the world. No one can make you do this. It has to be your choice, Ianto, do you understand? I'm speaking from personal experience, here. It's too much to ask of anyone. No one has the right to decide this for you.”  
  
“But I can't just—”  
  
“I mean it. Only do it if you want—” She cut off midsentence, her face going instantly blank and distant. “Emotion is an inefficient way of determining action,” she said in a monotone.  
  
Ianto turned and walked away from her, feeling sick. A traitorous thought stole across his mind. Even if they accessed the file, even if they found a cure, what was to say it would reverse the effects of the virus? If Tosh were going to be stuck this way anyway, was it even worth it?  
  
[THIS VIRUS. IT'S DOING THIS TO EVERYONE?]  
  
[Yes.]  
  
[I HADN'T REALISED...]  
  
Ianto stopped in front of his workstation and watched Cardiff tear itself apart. He couldn't tell if the nauseous horror he felt was his or the Archive's.  
  
Was Tosh right? Did he have any choice in this? Could he live with himself if he chose himself at the expense of everyone else?  
  
[I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU'RE AFRAID NOW,] the Archive thought. He could feel its fear, and a pang of guilt assailed him. He hadn't meant to infect it with his own doubts, just explain his own. [I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE RESULT WOULD BE OF OUR INTEGRATION. WE COULD BOTH BE LOST.]  
  
There was something else he wasn't considering, too. If no one had the right to make this decision for him, how did he have a right to make the decision for the Archive? It was . . . well, maybe not a 'person', but it was alive and aware. Didn't it deserve to decide its own fate?  
  
[What do you want to do?] he asked it before he could lose his nerve.  
  
[I WANT TO LIVE,] it said. [THIS COULD DESTROY US, OR IT COULD NOT. IT COULD UNDO THE DAMAGE THE VIRUS HAS CAUSED OR NOT. BUT IF IT GIVES US ANY CHANCE TO SAVE THE OTHERS, INCLUDING THOSE YOU LOVE, ISN'T IT WORTH THE RISK?]  
  
From the mouths of babes, he thought. Half alien, half computer, practically just born, and it was already a better person than he was. He felt something expand warmly in his chest. He could think of much worse fates than to become part of someone like that. Maybe it would even improve him. [You're right,] he thought to it. [Thank you.]  
  
  


* * *

  
  
He hadn’t really planned it. He’d gone up to comfort Gwen, but she’d waved him off, so he’d gone back to the lab and suddenly found himself sliding down the wall and sinking to the floor, chest tight, breath coming in heaving gasps. He hung his head down on his knees and tried to calm his racing breath and heart. Jesus. He wasn’t usually this panicky. He got his breathing under control and then just sat there, hands clenched around his shins, head on his knees, his eyes closed. Footsteps alerted him to Ianto’s presence, but he didn’t raise his head. He felt the archivist standing beside him.  
  
“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Are you sick?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Owen grumbled, defence mechanisms on autopilot.  
  
Ianto slid his back down the wall to sit beside him. Owen felt a hand slide across the back of his neck, then across his forehead, checking for fever. Then there was a tug at his shoulder. “Come on, Owen, sit up. Don’t be an idiot. You’re not sick, but you’re obviously not fine.”  
  
“It’s just everything.” Owen groaned. “You, Gwen. The whole fucking world.”  
  
“I know. We have to do what we can, though, and hope for the best. I’ve decided to go ahead with the surgery. _We’ve_ decided to go ahead with the surgery.”  
  
Owen knew he meant the Archive, and it was odd to think of Ianto as two beings. And that he’d be operating on Ianto’s brain. “That’s just it,” he admitted. “Not to freak you out or anything, but I’ve never even done brain surgery before. Seen one performed, yeah. Years ago. Autopsied brains, sure. But I’ve never done one myself.”  
  
Ianto prodded him until Owen looked at him. “I trust you. No matter what you think, you’re a great doctor. If I have to have somebody poking round in my head, I’d rather it be you than anyone else—no matter how experienced.”  
  
Owen scoffed, and shrugged. It didn’t dislodge Ianto’s hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t try again. “Yeah, well it’s not on you if I make you brain-dead or destroy your ability to see or something. You’ve got a lot of trust for a bloke who doesn’t have a damn clue what he’s doing.”  
  
“I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m trusting my friend. Besides, if I’m brain-dead, I’m hardly going to be in any position to blame you, am I?”  
  
“I suppose not. And I won’t have much time to blame myself because we’ll all be mad carnival machines soon. Fuck. I guess we really do have to do this.”  
  
Ianto shifted his weight and shrugged, giving a little snort. “Well, considering the alternative is to walk into A&E and ask them to patch up the alien growing inside my skull, I’d say you’re the most qualified person available.”  
  
“I guess so. And there’s Mainframe, too.”  
  
“Look, Owen. All joking aside, I know you can do this. I’m sorry you have to, but I know you’ll be brilliant. You’re a genius doctor. Trust yourself.”  
  
Owen sighed. He had to do this surgery. There was no other choice, no alternate course of action. He had to push back his insecurities and worry for Ianto’s sake. “All right, I’ll try.”  
  
Ianto pushed himself up and held out a hand to Owen, who took it. Ianto let out a breath and looked at Owen. “Well, there’s no time like the present, I suppose.”  
  
“Right, yeah.” Owen walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a bundle of scrubs. “I know it’s terribly awkward, but you’ll probably want to put these on. I’m sure you don’t want to get your suit dirty.”  
  
Ianto nodded and took the clothes, heading to the washroom to get dressed. Owen took the time to get ready, calling up the relevant information on the Mainframe and setting up all the tools and things he’d need.  
  
Ianto came down and made himself comfortable on the table. He looked up at Owen. “I poked my head in and told Gwen not to come down here until you called her back.”  
  
“Good thinking. She’d probably not want to see this.”  
  
Owen pulled the ventilator over and put IV stand beside them. He slipped the IV needle into Ianto’s hand but didn’t open the valve.  
  
“I’m going to sedate you so that you’ll be unconscious but able to respond to commands from me. It’s called twilight anaesthesia. Normally I wouldn’t have to intubate you, but because this is sudden and I didn’t make you starve yourself for no reason this past week, I’ll have to.”  
  
“That’s fine. I just want to get this done.”  
  
Owen opened the IV and let the sedative begin to enter Ianto’s bloodstream. Ianto’s eyelids fluttered and then closed. Quickly, Owen pressed his fingers to Ianto’s throat and slid the ventilation tube in, switched on the mechanical ventilator. Then he picked up a pair of clippers.  
  
He sighed. Ianto was going to be so pissed. “Sorry, mate.”  
  
The buzz of the razor felt too loud. It hurt Owen’s ears. Soon he had a patch of smooth skin where he was to open Ianto’s head. He disinfected the area and numbed it quickly. He turned away and gave himself a moment to tremble with nerves and hyperventilate. He really was terrified of messing this up.  
  
Turning the laser scalpel onto its second-lowest setting, he cut a wide flap of skin, pulling it back from the skull. Another setting higher and he cut an ovoid piece from the bone of Ianto’s skull, placing the piece onto a clean dish.  
  
There it was. The Archive. Strange, thin tendrils of iridescent greyish-black webbed across Ianto’s brain. Larger nodes that looked like tiny computer chips lay across some of the folds of the brain. It reminded him of an integrated circuit with Ianto’s brain as the circuit board. He could see where the tendrils had broken apart and separated, in the area where they dived down and attached to the caudate nucleus, another major part of memory. He knew there were other tendrils, probably also broken, ascending through the deeper parts of Ianto’s brain towards the area. It made sense. It unsettled him in a distant, thriller-movie sort of way. Humans should not be part-robot-thing, and yet this one, his friend, was. And, oh god, memories of Katie threatened to assault him with painful images but he shoved them violently away and went back to work.  
  
With forceps, he carefully pulled the two broken tendrils toward each other, then reached for another instrument that looked similar to the laser scalpel. Running it along the tendrils, he watched as a filament of peculiar silvery colour ran from attached each pair of broken strands and bound them together, speeding up the reparation process. The silver was quickly covered in the same iridescent grey-black, like myelin or electrical insulation. Then he shifted the tendrils forward, so they slid deeper into the crevices of the brain they’d pulled out of.  
  
He nodded in satisfaction as the tendrils seemed to grow stronger, settling down into the tissue. Then he readied a thin alien compound endoscope they had nicked from UNIT, sliding a bit of extra piping beside it to hold a sort of alien Swiss army knife of surgical tools.  
  
It wasn’t too difficult for the oddly mercurial bit of alien technology to slide its way through the crevices of Ianto’s brain, through the lateral ventricle, and down to the caudate nucleus itself. He had been right. Black tendrils, their connections broken, could be seen by the tiny camera. Careful not to make a twitch, even with his nerves as shot as they were, Owen manipulated the tiny surgical tools with flicks of his fingers against the controls at the top of the endoscope. Slowly, all the tendrils were secured together again.  
  
Owen was ready to remove the little camera when he noticed a strange mass. He’d missed a few tendrils, and they had somehow managed to tangle themselves together into a strange knot.  
  
“Shit,” he muttered, a knot of tension clenching in his own stomach.  
  
It was slow work to undo the snarl of black fibres. They all wanted to slide back to where they had been instead of where they needed to go. And Owen was trying so hard not to shake from the fear riding his belly. Twice, the endoscope and tools seemed to get stuck, and Owen was terrified of what that meant. But then the tension would loosen and he could work again. Eventually, all the little filaments of the archive were attached together into a fine black web once more. Owen slid the endoscope and tools out, still biting back on the nervousness he felt waiting inside.  
  
He placed the round plate of bone back in place and switched the laser scalpel onto the reverse setting, sealing the bone back into place, then the flap of skin. Ah, the wonders of alien technology. No stitches to hassle with.  
  
He closed the valve of the IV and slid it from Ianto’s hand. As he cleaned everything up, he hoped to whatever might exist out there for someone like him, who couldn't believe in a god, that this would work. That he wouldn't mess up and destroy some fundamental part of Ianto's brain. Removing the ventilation tube, he rolled the little table into a recovery room off the medbay and slid Ianto into the bed. He was lighter than he looked, the sod.  
  
For a moment, he let himself freak out. He balled his fists and rocked himself, letting the shakes overtake him and the hyperventilation that had been threatening finally make itself known. Then he reined it all in with a few deep breaths and sat down in the chair beside Ianto’s bed, staring at nothing in the direction of the Welshman’s left eyebrow, only leaning forward when Ianto’s eyelids began flickering.

* * *

  
  
“How do you feel?”  
  
Ianto blinked. He'd just lain down on the table, hadn't he? He tried to focus, but the world kept changing proportions around him.  
  
“The dizziness should pass in just a few minutes.”  
  
He was in a bed, sitting up, sort of. He coughed, and a band of pain tightened round his skull. “Are you done?” he asked.  
  
“Yup. Look at me, I need to check your pupils. Bright light.”  
  
That was all the warning Ianto got before he was blinded by the glare from Owen's penlight. “Ouch,” he said. “Thanks.”  
  
“You're welcome,” Owen said absently. He switched to Ianto's other eye, then clicked the light off. “Everything looks fine there.”  
  
Ianto blinked away afterimages. “How'd it go?”  
  
“Nerve-wracking and complicated, but you seem to be alive and still moderately sentient, so I suppose that counts as a success. Do you have an overwhelming desire to cater to my every whim?”  
  
The disorientation was fading faster than Ianto expected, but it wasn't being helped by Owen's manic, nonsensical commentary. “Not in the slightest,” he replied.  
  
“Damn. That extra procedure I threw in didn't work, then. How many fingers am I holding up?”  
  
“Your hand's behind your back, so I don't know. But I'd guess two, in a rude gesture.”  
  
Owen sighed. “You know me too well. Move your right arm for me.”  
  
It took Ianto a moment to remember which one was his right, but then he did as Owen said. Owen ran him through a series of tests, asking him the date and his name and location and favourite flavour of lube, and having him move various body parts on command. Ianto ended up with his tongue sticking out, his finger on his nose and his eyes crossed before he realised Owen had moved on from actual medical tests to taking the piss.  
  
“Nope, the bonus treatment I did to make you my willing slave definitely _did_ work,” Owen said.  
  
“Tosser,” Ianto said with a very ill-advised laugh. He winced at the sudden ache in his head and put his hand up to his skull. “Oh, God, no,” he said as he felt the patchwork texture of his scalp.  
  
Owen did look sympathetic at that. “Sorry, there's no way round the shaving,” he said. “Hopefully it'll grow back in a week or two.”  
  
‘I'm bald!”  
  
“Not _entirely_.”  
  
Ianto groaned.  
  
“What about the Archive?”  
  
“It's been quiet.” With a frown, Ianto tried to tell if he could sense its presence or not. [Are you there?] he thought.  
  
[I . . . THINK . . . SO . . .] It sounded even groggier than Ianto felt.  
  
“I think it's still a bit out of it from the anaesthetic,” he told Owen.  
  
“Well, considering its body mass, I'm not really surprised. I'll go get you something to drink while we wait for it to wake up.”  
He must have drifted off some whilst Owen was gone, because the next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake and handed a glass of water with a straw. “How's Tosh?” he asked as he tried to make sure he didn't drop the glass.  
  
Owen's mouth flattened. “About the same.”  
  
“And Gwen?”  
  
“Her fever's gone down, at least.”  
  
Ianto nodded gingerly and sipped at the tepid water.  
  
“Anything?” Owen asked a few minutes later.  
  
“I still feel exactly the same.”  
  
[SO DO I.]  
  
Ianto felt his spirits lift. Maybe he'd been scared of nothing. There was no loss of self here, no merging of minds or being absorbed into an alien consciousness. [You're awake now?] he asked.  
  
[MOSTLY.]  
  
Owen looked like he'd been punched in the gut. “It didn't work, then?”  
  
[SOMETHING IS STILL MISSING. I CAN SEE THE OTHER PARTS OF THE INFORMATION NOW, AND IANTO'S MEMORIES. BUT I STILL CAN'T INTERPRET THEM.]  
  
That brought all of Ianto's hopes, so high just a moment ago, crashing down.  
  


§

  
They'd broken out the good brandy, the stuff Jack kept hidden in the morgue in the drawer next to a woman named Alice. They were toasting the end of the world.  
  
“The twenty-first century is when it all changes,” Gwen said morosely.  
  
Owen clinked his glass against hers. “Too bad we won't be around to see it.”  
  
“I just wish I knew why the integration didn't work,” Ianto said, frustrated.  
  
“It's no mystery," Owen said. “Obviously, I screwed up.”  
  
[NO, THE SURGERY WAS PERFECT. THERE'S NO PHYSICAL REASON INTEGRATION SHOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED.]  
  
“Maybe the human brain just isn't compatible,” Ianto added.  
  
With a shudder, Owen poured himself another finger of liquor. “I wish you'd stop doing that. It's really creepy.”  
  
“Don't say that,” Ianto snapped. The surge of protective anger he felt surprised him, but as he thought about it he decided it was justified. “The Archive decided to risk everything to save us, did you know that? To let you open up my head and perform surgery on it, and to chance this integration without knowing if it would destroy it or erase its personality or what. For us. I think it's earned the right to speak. And I think it deserves something a bit better than 'creepy'.”  
  
“Calm down, mate. I didn't mean it that way.”  
  
Gwen stared at him with wide eyes. “It's just that it's getting harder to tell which one of you is talking.”  
  
Owen smirked, then leant forward with an exaggerated expression of earnestness. “I'm sorry, Archibald,” he said. “I don't think you're creepy.”  
  
Amazingly, Ianto felt a wave of amusement from the Archive. He shook his head. “I think it likes you. Even though you're a complete tosser.”  
  
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Owen said proudly.  
  
They drank in silence for a few minutes, and then Gwen said in a small voice, “I wish Rhys were here.”  
  
Ianto shook his head and said, without looking at her, “I wish I'd been able to save everyone. I'm sorry I failed.”  
  
“It's not your fault, Ianto.”  
  
Owen tossed back the rest of his snifter. “No, it's all bloody Jack's fault. If he hadn't swanned off and left us, we wouldn't have been in this mess to start with.”  
  
Ianto didn't want to think about Jack. If they were waiting out the short time until the end, Ianto didn't want to spend it being reminded that he was alone. Wondering why he hadn't even warranted a goodbye.  
  
[YOU'RE NOT ALONE,] the Archive thought, sounding hesitant.  
  
[No, you're right,] Ianto thought. The realisation was comforting, and he was suddenly glad the Archive was there. Having another mind alongside his own, a warm companionship unobstructed by the distance and miscommunication between people, made facing the darkness of the end more bearable. [Thank you.]  
  
[IT'S NOT JUST TO YOUR BENEFIT. I'M LONELY, TOO.]  
  
[I'm sort of sorry that the integration didn't work. For myself, I mean. It would have been an exceptional experience. And now that I'm going to die anyway the reasons I was scared of integrating seem a little ridiculous.]  
  
[IT'S WHAT I WAS MADE TO DO. I REGRET THAT I'LL DIE WITHOUT FINDING OUT WHAT IT'S LIKE.]  
  
It sounded so lost and forlorn, so like a child in need of comforting, that if it had been a separate person Ianto would have reached out and embraced it. Instead, he found the urge translated to a feeling of opening up, internally. It was similar to when he retreated from his body to let the Archive take over, but instead of moving away from it he moved towards it. He could see it suddenly— not its physical body, but its essence, a glittering matrix of the best of life's emotion and wisdom combined with the best of technology's logic and reach. It had far transcended Torchwood's myopic design. It was beautiful.  
  
He felt the last of his resistance fall away, walls of fear and mistrust he hadn't even realised still stood. He continued to move towards the Archive, closer and closer, until he was moving through it. Within it. And then the boundaries of "him" and "it" became meaningless, and the universe exploded into a kaleidoscope of colour and light and knowledge.  
  


§

  
Ianto/the Archive opened his eyes. He hadn't even realised he'd closed them. Gwen and Owen continued to talk, apparently unaware anything had changed. He paused a moment to take stock. He was still himself. He was still both his selves. He could sense the sarcasm and control that were distinctly Ianto, the empathy and unselfconsciousness that came from the Archive, and the desire to serve and the drive for competency that both of them shared. His memories overlapped without conflict, merely a slight echo round the immediate past where he remembered conversations from two perspectives. It wasn't what either of him had expected. It was better.  
  
The knowledge of the archives, London and Cardiff, scrolled out in front of him, overlaying his vision of the conference room like a luminous hologram. He could see the file on his own creation: a diagram of the proposed growth pattern hovered over angled windows, the notes from the implantation procedure scrolled across the tabletop and his karyotype hung in midair, suspended in front of a normal Artandex karyotype. He raised a hand and both slid to the side.  
  
He could sense the Mainframe, too. Hear it, almost, though it murmured in machine code. And it could hear him. He called up the current status of the Hub and displayed it on the overhead screen. Owen and Gwen started as the screen came on by itself.  
  
Ianto scrolled through the information, flipped past the various CCTV feeds with a flick of his wrist. Grabbed an external connection and checked the situation in Cardiff— news channels, trending internet discussions, emergency radio broadcasts, military communications. He absorbed it quicker than a normal human could hope to follow, then made a gesture with his hand and cleared the screen.  
  
“Ianto?” Gwen asked, voice awed and more than a little afraid.  
  
“WE ARE THE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE,” he said, just to see the expression on Owen's face.  
  
It was everything he could have hoped for. Watching all the colour drain out of his face as his jaw fell open, Ianto couldn't keep from grinning any longer.  
  
“ _Ianto_?” Owen asked, hovering between relief, disbelief and exasperation.  
  
“Well,” Ianto said, “I'd prefer it to Archibald.”  
  
“Oh, my God!” Gwen yelled, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms round him.  
  
“It worked?” Owen asked. “What happened? Why was it delayed?”  
  
Ianto chuckled and patted Gwen's shoulder. She was crying into the joint of his neck. “We had to want it. The only thing keeping us apart was ourselves.”  
  
Gwen grabbed Owen and pulled him into the hug. He came with a minimum of protest and a poorly hidden smile. “Fine thing to do to your doctor,” he grumbled into Ianto's ear. When they finally separated, Owen cleared his throat and asked, “And you have access to the databases?” Ianto pretended not to notice his eyes were damp.  
  
“Yes. All of it. It's _brilliant_.” He flicked his fingers and file two-seventeen appeared on the screen. “I believe this is the information we need.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
They stared up at the screen. Ianto flipped through the information, making sure to go slowly so that Owen and Gwen could read it as well.  
  
“It looks like this virus thing is something from the Xarvic system. It was created accidentally by a scientist looking to make self-repairing cyborg technology for medical purposes. Instead he made this thing. It’s called Engrenaxe. At least, that’s what it says here. It came to Earth in 1987, but only infected two individuals, and they were locked away by Torchwood and destroyed. Then there was Ashton-under-Lyne in 1998. Torchwood took that investigation over and killed the overseeing professor.  
  
“Torchwood specialists took samples from the deceased and infected to study, but eventually were infected themselves and had to be executed. Despite the fact that the studies were indefinitely suspended, the research paid off and—oh—”  
  
Gwen made a small noise of horror and disbelief. Beside him, Owen’s body slumped, a terrified whisper of “No!” falling from his lips. Ianto was afraid to look at either of his friends, to see the despondency in their eyes.  
  
“And, apparently,” The words came out slowly, jerkily, unwilling. “No cure was found.”  
  
“Oh god!” Gwen choked out, shoving her chair back and running from the room. Dazedly, Owen and Ianto watched her go.  
Owen covered his eyes with his hands. “So we’re useless. Earth is being taken over by some alien epidemic and Torchwood is useless.” Moments later, he groaned and looked up at Ianto. “What’s going to happen to us?”  
  
The information flicked across Ianto’s vision. It wasn’t pretty. “We’ll get… converted, I suppose.”  
  
 _We went to all this trouble for nothing_ , Ianto thought as dawn lightened in the sky on all the news feeds. _All this integrating and surgery and now I get to die only a few hours later._  
  
He wondered how the archive, the actual physical machine, would be affected by the conversion. The information slid into his field of vision with a simple thought. The anatomy and physiology of the archive was mapped out in front of him, information scrolling down his vision.  
  
With the flick of a finger, the files on the archive were replaced with the files on the virus. Ianto scanned through its effects, the alien compounds of it, the structure of the virus itself. The structure. It caught his eye and he stopped, examining it. The symmetry of its structure was strange, its elements skewed, and, as he pulled the file on the archive up beside it, it seemed as though the virus itself would flatten or uncoil as it met the alien bio-metal of the archive. The archive was impervious to the virus. Instantly, he called up the information regarding the archive’s effect on its host. The host was protected by a sort of “radar” that called unwanted substances to the physical archive for destruction.  
  
The virus couldn’t affect him. Even if he somehow became unable to access files, or if he lost connection with the archive, the physical architecture of the archive would still be working. It would still be protecting him from any sort of illness or infection. He could never be infected.  
  
“Ianto,” Owen’s voice interrupted his research. The medic was doubled over in his chair. His voice was tight with pain and dread. “Ianto, I need you to scan me.”  
  
Ianto leapt up and ran from the room. As he passed into the lab, he could see Gwen on the gantry to the greenhouse, twitching. Her left arm no longer had flesh. Her eyes were blank black lenses. He ran back into the meeting room. Owen was sitting up straighter, panting.  
  
“ _Fuck_ , this hurts.”  
  
Ianto ran the scanner over the medic, breath trembling. As the Bekaran scanner beeped, he held his breath and hoped, hoped. A triple beep and the results showed on the screen.  
  
“Infected.”  
  
Owen sat back in his seat. “I thought so. Fuck, it hurts. How did Tosh hide it so well?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He tried to quell the rising panic. He couldn’t take this. It was all too much. He wanted to curl into a ball and hope this was all some incredibly vivid nightmare he’d wake up from.  
  
“What about you? How come you’re not infected?”  
  
No. No, god, no. Owen couldn’t know. He couldn’t tell him. He wanted to scream just thinking about the unfairness of it all.  
  
“Ianto?”  
  
“I…can’t.”  
  
“Can’t what?”  
  
“Can’t get infected. Because of the archive. I can’t.”  
  
“A cure?”  
  
“No. Just… like a block. A shield. The physical archive kills any foreign elements in my body. It just destroys the virus.”  
  
“I hate you.”  
  
“No you don’t.”  
  
“No, I don’t. I just hate that you get to live.” Owen coughed, stuck a finger in his mouth and poked around. “Shit. All metal.”  
  
Ianto grabbed Owen’s hand, gripping it tightly. He could feel gears shift beneath the skin. Terror clawed at his gut.  
Owen stared at their joined hands, a mixture of fear and worry and tired acceptance warring on his face. Neither spoke. There was nothing left to say.  
  
It seemed that time had ceased to exist, that Ianto could hear every minute tick and creak in the silence of the hours as Owen’s body converted itself. He thought their hands were going to break when Owen thrashed through his heart converting. He had no sense of time. It had been hours. Maybe days. All he knew was that he was watching his friend slowly dying and had no way to stop it.  
  
“Owen.” Ianto grabbed Owen’s hand with both of his, as if it could make his point stronger, make his plea be heard. “I don’t want to live. I don’t want to be the only one left alive. The only person on earth. I can’t be.”  
  
Owen coughed, and gritted his teeth in pain as his eye socket seemed to melt and stretch, a cold camera lens developing as a poor substitute. “I’m really sorry, Ianto,” he croaked. “Really, I am.”  
  
“It’s all right, Owen.” Ianto couldn’t help the tears stinging his eyes at the thought of being alone on a planet of automatons with no one to call for help, and his friends gone.  
  
He gripped Owen’s hand tighter, as if it could stop the conversion. But he stared, and watched, unable to tear his eyes away as Owen’s body changed, killing itself into a machine. Owen flashed a smile and weakly flipped him the V before he stilled in his seat, blank camera eyes forward.  
  
Ianto had nearly bitten his tongue off guiding what remained of his three best friends into the lower levels. He locked them into a secure cell. They sat on the benches, staring blankly at each other, unmoving, unresponsive, inhuman. He sealed the door to the cells shut and trudged back up the stairs. He turned off the CCTV feed of the streets outside, full of fires and destruction and wandering automatons.  
  
He flicked on the CCTV of the cells. The shells of his friends stared at each other in blank nothingness. For a moment, he let the sobs wrack his body, the fear that had settled deep into his bones, the awful truth, the resignation. Then he inhaled a deep, shaking breath, and sat down to wait for Jack.


	6. Alternate Happy Ending

Owen tapped a measured amount of powder into the reservoir of the inhaler and snapped it shut. The file that Ianto found had contained detailed instructions on the creation of the counter-virus, but manufacturing a synthetic disease was something Owen had never done before. He hoped he'd got it right. At least Ianto had been helping him -- now that he had all the knowledge of the Archive and some sort of wireless connection to the Mainframe, he was an invaluable lab assistant.

"How's this supposed to work?" Gwen asked.

He held up an inhaler, the same kind most people used for their allergies. "Well, if I did it right, this should reverse all the changes the original virus made. Hey, presto, human again."

"That easy?"

"Easy? Obviously you're not the one who spent the last six hours in the lab."

The clang of footsteps on metal announced Ianto's return, leading the automaton that used to be Tosh. She seemed to be following Ianto willingly enough, incurious but cooperative, tiny flumes of steam jetting from her joints with each step. Owen felt the plastic of the inhaler creak under his hand and loosened his grip with an effort. This had to work. Ianto positioned her on the end of the table and moved to one side. He kept a hand on her arm, whether for comfort or restraint Owen couldn't tell.

Gwen watched with a concerned frown, chewing on her lip. "How long should it take?"

Ianto's eyes went slightly out of focus, the way they always seemed to now whenever he accessed the Archive's databases. As if he were looking at something the rest of them couldn't see. His free hand twitched at his side in small, phantom gestures. He'd tried to explain what it was like, but Owen got the feeling it wasn't the sort of thing you could really put into words.

"It's re-patterning the DNA back to its natural structure, so it won't have the same resistance as the original virus. It replicates at a rate of seven generations per second, so with a concentration this dense, it should infect eight million new cells every picosecond." Ianto snapped back to the real world and smiled apologetically. "Almost instantaneously."

Owen took a deep breath and approached Tosh, trying not to look too closely at her expressionless face. He could hear the rhythmic tick-and-hiss of her pneumatic breath. He held the inhaler up to her mouth, timed the inhale, and pressed down on the plunger. The fine green powder sprayed out and coated the lower half of her face and the inside of her mouth. He hoped some of it had made it inside her, too. Physical contact of any sort should be enough, but this was Tosh. He wanted to be sure.

Nothing happened. Owen clenched his hands, tried to wait, tried to be patient, but a familiar sense of failure clogged his throat. He'd screwed up again. He was useless. He—

Tosh jerked and made a garbled sound of pain. A human sound. Owen reached for her shoulders as she doubled over and watched as flesh bloomed over her mechanical body like algae. It happened so fast that by the time his hand landed on her arm he could feel warm muscle and skin under the silk of her blouse. It looked like time-lapse photography.

"Shit," Gwen breathed.

"Are you all right?" Owen demanded when the transformation seemed complete.

Tosh looked up with tears of pain glimmering in her reassuringly human eyes. "I- I think so." Her hair hadn't grown back, and the dark stubble that framed her face made her look vulnerable and waifish.

Owen felt something unclench inside him. He pulled her to him and kissed the top of her prickly head. His arms were trembling, from relief this time, and his eyes were burning. He felt Ianto put a hand on his back. "All right," he said roughly, "I'm going to have to run some tests, just to make sure there aren't any lingering adverse effects, but we shouldn't wait on those to start disseminating the cure. Gwen, Ianto, take your doses. As for the rest of Cardiff—"

"Myfanwy seems to have escaped infection," Ianto said. "I'll give her a bag of the counter-virus with a hole in the bottom to disperse it and send her out hunting to spread it over the city. If we can expose a moderate percentage of the population, the contagiousness of the counter-virus should take care of the rest."

"That'll work." Owen released Tosh and stepped back with a shaky breath.

Gwen threw herself in his arms. "Thank you," she said fervently. "I'll take a dose to Rhys, too."

"Good idea."

Ianto’s hands twitched in the air as he studied the information in archive’s files. "By tonight, Cardiff should be almost back to normal except for the physical damage caused by the riots," he said.

"We did it?" Tosh asked.

"Owen did it," said Ianto.

Owen felt the truth of that, realised he'd pulled through despite his fear and accomplished the nearly-impossible several times. Everyone had been relying on him, and he hadn't failed them. He savoured the feeling of pride and satisfaction for a moment, then shook his head. "We did it," he said.


End file.
